#her back must hurt from carrying the channel

[dreamofbona]

'Steal The Show' Covered by 우주소녀 다영 (WJSN DAYOUNG)

i think dayoung changed the password or smth

girl sounds amazing this cover>>>

[heartfullofleeches]

What if someone from "Sheep"'s old pack came back around and tried to expose them, maybe for joy in suffering or to get people to split away and have an easy meal?

Sorry if this read weird I'm tired as hell

(I doubt any of them would recognize "Sheep" after all these years, but here's what would happen if any predator tried to reveal "Sheep's" identity.")

[Warnings Physical Violence, "Sheep" has a panic attack.]

-

"How stupid can you lot be?"

No...This isn't real. It's all a bad dream, right? You'll wake up any minute now, surrounded by all your friends and neighbors you've yet to acquaint yourself with. Perhaps you'll finally join Rabbit on one of their picnics. Or maybe Swan can teach you how to play chess - surely he must be tired of you asking which piece is which every time you play.

Claws digging into the meat of your shoulders stake you within the world of this cruel reality. This isn't a dream. You can't wake up, even if you chewed your own tongue off and suffocated on the blood as every cell in your body screamed at you to do. It would save you the torment. Your mouth hangs open, ragged draws of air and the smooth, filed surface of your canines preventing you from carrying out the deed.

"A sheep? This thing?" The cackle he barks causes your knees to curl against your chest - body instinctively trying to make you as small as possible. What do you have to be do afraid of? If you weren't so spineless you could've done something by now. Everyone is going to die now, and they'll die hating you.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we grew up from the same pack!"

It won't be long now- the concern for their fellow neighbor bleeding away to further terror and confusion. Were you responsible for the recent disappearances? How long until you devoured everyone? Monster. Beast. Wolf.

The townspeople are in a frenzy. What should they do? If the wolf's claims are true.... No- That could be dealt with that. The most important thing was getting you away from him before he hurt you anymore. They're so many of them. It'd be easy, right? The thought crosses their minds, but no one dares to speak first. A rabbit grows annoyed of their hesitance. Whilst the town is bickering amongst themselves, you're laying there - cowering for your life as that wolf threatens to ruin it for you. It isn't fair. The knife in their basket was for cutting cakes for you to share...

"Liar....."

As the rabbit weaves through the crowd, another resident of the town returns home from her daily gatherings. Rocks weight the pockets of her dress - the shouts and panic from her fellow neighbors channeling miles throughout the forest. Scrambling to find the sharpest one, she throws it directly at the back of the wolf's head.

"You damned liar!"

The wolf staggers forward - a pitiful whine escaping you as his claws retract from your shoulder. Blood gushes from the back of his cranium, a sharp ringing in his ears bring him to his knees - landing center on the blade aimed at his stomach.

"About a week ago, Sheep and I found a robin's nest in my backyard.... They got all teary eyed when the last egg wouldn't hatch... Tell me.... Would a wolf do that?"

Rabbit plants their foot on the wolf's chest, twisting the handle of their knife as they rip it from his bowels. The wolf grabs into their ankle, using what little strength he has to shove them off of him. Mouse leaps onto him from behind, slamming another rock into the nape of his neck.

"Take it back! Take it back! Sheep isn't anything like you! How dare you accuse them! You monster!"

Stop....

Your voice is too quiet for any of them to hear. You doubt that'd stop them anyway. They'll kill him. He came here to do the same, but does that make it right? Strong arms lift you from the dirt floor - mindful of their antlers as they place your head to their shoulder. Mayor Moose always knew you best - hushing your sniffles as soon as they begin. Swan stands off to the side behind him, refusing to meet your eyes. He tucks the coat of his suit over the handgun strapped to his belt.

"I'm sorry..... I'm so sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?" Swan still fails to look up at you. He knows if he does- there's the smallest chance he'll give into your pleads.

"Get some rest. You'll need it after the day you've had."

Carried away from the commotion, the defenses your fellow townspeople confess, the blood they spill so that your innocent is kept - the blood loss and sheer shock of it all lulls you into a dreamless slumber.

It's the best sleep you've gotten in months.

[mind-intheclouds342]

A new ladder - Reader x Curly

Previous - Part 5 - Next

"This looks like a funeral home!"

You said, clapping, alarming Curly who had barely woken up about ten minutes ago. 

You started to open the curtains to let some light in and turned on the television, looking for a channel that plays music instead of news. 

You smiled when you found one with music you like and were ready to go prepare breakfast, but you almost fell from the shock when you saw Curly. 

"Hey-!... You got up on your own..." you mentioned, holding your chest. 

Curly: "Ah... Yes, I made coffee but... I couldn't serve it, it's still in the coffee maker... Do you do that every day?"

"...You have a very, very deep sleep, in case you didn't know..." 

You kept staring at him, not taking your eyes off him as you slowly walked to grab the coffee pot to pour the coffee into two cups. 

Curly: "What do you want to do today?"

You raised an eyebrow as you thought of a response. 

"There's an amusement park in the city, how does that sound?"

Curly: "Sounds good" he nodded. 

You gave him a smile and pushed him a little, making him lose his balance and have to hold onto the table to avoid falling. 

"Impossible, you're going to fall apart if we go there. We need to practice your walking and how to use your new limbs."

Curly: "What do you recommend then?" he asked, finally standing up with some difficulty. 

"Let's go for a jog!" She patted his back, ready to prepare something to add to breakfast. 

After eating, they both changed into clothes, some for training. 

Curly noticed how loose his clothes had become due to the loss of muscle. 

"Later I can adjust it if you like, is it very uncomfortable for you?" 

You approached him to check it. 

Curly: "I'm worried that my pants will fall down."

"Look how easy that is to fix" 

You went to get thread and a needle to make a hem on the waistband of the pants and you put a few stitches in the hem to make it snug. 

"Done, I'll adjust it properly another day, now let's go, let's go"

First, you took a drive to a less busy area; you didn't want him to feel uncomfortable with the attention of people passing by on the road. 

"It's great that you can stand up and walk, do you think it's okay to try climbing up to that sign?" 

Curly: "Or course. I can do it" 

"Oh, someone is enthusiastic?" 

You laughed and got ready next to him to start jogging, he lagged behind for a few seconds but then took a few steps. 

You quickly returned when you heard he had fallen to help him get back on his feet. 

You repeated that action several times, but you got worried when he fell and his face hit the ground directly. 

"Hey, maybe jogging was too ambitious, we can walk through the forest here." 

He stood up with your help, head down, annoyed for not being able to do something he used to do every day a while ago. 

"You didn't hurt yourself, did you? "Let me see" 

You slowly removed the mask he was wearing to check it, and they were startled by the scream of a child, just as a mother with her child was passing by. 

Curly immediately turned to the other side so the child wouldn't have to see it while the woman gestured apologetically, carrying her son and quickly leaving the place. 

"They're gone now" you said, patting his shoulder. 

Curly: "I know... That i must look really bad... "

"Hey, don't think too much about it, come on, let's take a walk to clear your mind, okay?"

You took the sleeve of his jacket to pull him with you, delving into the forest and walking along the already marked path. 

He stood there watching as you held onto his clothes, and saw the prosthesis, how crude it was in shape, being made only to be functional and not aesthetic. 

I would like to hold her hand... 

He thought while still focused on your hand, and you turned to look at him when his prosthetic touched your forearm, strangely it felt like a caress. 

When he realized what he had done, he got nervous. 

Curly: "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to scare you." 

"No, no, no problem, I should have let you go. You must have felt really bad being pulled."

You said, smiling as you let go of his clothes, but that made him even more depressed. 

You continued walking until you felt a tug on your jacket, looking at the man in confusion. 

Curly: "...I have better balance if I hold onto you"

"Mm? Do you think you can keep up with me?"

You smiled with a hint of mischief as you walked slowly at first, and with each step, you increased your speed, making Curly follow you at the same pace, without letting go of your jacket. 

And within a few minutes, both were jogging in sync, your legs even moving in perfect harmony. 

You ran the entire forest trail until you returned to the starting point, both laughing, very excited about Curly's rapid progress. 

They took a break to drink some water and rest a bit, sitting on the hood of the car. 

Curly: "I missed this..." 

"Did you use to exercise a lot?"

Curly: "Yes, it was one of my hobbies, exercising, lifting weights, jogging, I had my own routine, it was nice."

"You were athletic too, mm, you sounded like the perfect man," you stretched before getting up.

He remained thinking about your words, sighing as he remembered that he would never be that man again.

Curly: "Yeah... someone cool, right?"

"Not for me. Routines aren't bad, but ugh they make me sick, perfect people, they seem like robots programmed to do the same thing until they die. Everything they do seems so good, they eat healthy, exercise, work, study, but it just ends up being a cycle because... they don't aspire to anything else, you know?" 

You shrugged as you opened the door of your car. 

"Because... what's the point of reaching the top if you're not going to keep climbing something higher?"

He felt that for a moment, his entire world had stopped; he could only hear the beating of his heart, and everything else was just silence. 

He opened his mouth to say something, but only a sigh escaped, lost in your silhouette before him, who only hoped you would get in the car so you could go home together. 

When you honked the horn, you brought him out of his trance. 

"Are you going to get in or are you going to run to home?" you asked, smiling. 

I knew well that you were capable of leaving it there, so he quickly climbed up next to your seat.

[slashthrashandcrash]

By being a bitch in my 30’s I must submit that Danny has more than crunchy knees and a need for a nap after trials. The lil freak carries tums in his pocket since he’ll get indigestion out of no where, he has to make an old man noise every time he gets up from a seat, and he has to stretch before trials otherwise he runs the risk of pulling a muscle.

NAPPING AFTER TRIALS IS DEADASS WHAT I DREW FOR THAT GHOSTPIG FRIENDSHIP AND I LOVE IT

He's the type to put on the TV and immediately fall asleep, but then wake up and tell you he was watching that when you try to change the channel. He slaps his thighs while getting up and says "welp..." to signal that he's leaving. His back always hurts no matter what. His joints will randomly crack and it's the most sickening noise ever heard.

And the best part? Mandy is also in her 30s, and she's older than him.

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

Okay so my genuine thoughts on the final scenes of Totk

So having Link go through the final ‘dungeon’ and wind up exactly where we started the game, with those rocks we ACHED to break bc it was instinct, only to get that satisfaction after EVERYTHING and to see that Zelda’s fate was foretold millennia ago. Turning into a dragon WAS her only choice. And for good reason.

Ganondorf’s fight. WOW. That was genuinely so beautifully done. He ALSO dodges how Link does. To have Ganondorf dodge something, the entire action moving in slow motion, only to then have LINK do the same the next move?? Poetic cinema people. And the champions arriving 🥹 only to then have them all fucking thrown to the side when he takes in his doubles to regain his own strength? Absolutely insane and hands down my favorite boss fight in the entirety of the Zelda series. Yeah. That’s how much I enjoyed it as a player.

Can we also just talk about how concerned everyone got and how they yelled his name when he was taken from the underground??

And THEN the final fight with Ganondorf swallowing a secret stone and becoming a dragon. It brings Zelda’s sacrifice to light. She did it out of selflessness and love. He did it out of selfishness and hatred. GOD do I love characters that juxtapose each other. Zelda is a girl who was given the responsibility of a power she never wanted while Ganondorf is a megalomaniac who sought the destruction of peace because of his own selfish desires. Seeing the difference between them in that final fight as two dragons… it was EVERYTHING.

Zelda’s dragon form was tiny compared to Ganondorf’s dragon form. She protects. He attacks.

It’s so beautiful to see how Zelda, who isn’t mentally awake, first instinct are to save Link. She quickly maneuvers so she can not only juke out Ganondorf, but also then save Link who was flung into the air in the process. Link clutching onto her dragon fur? Or whatever?? And understanding that while the sages are all still underground, he is not alone in the sky. She’s going to be by his side this entire time.

For someone who was alone the majority of the last game… this was so fucking emotional and beautiful to see.

Them lowkey explaining calamity Ganon by also using dragons this game was a really nice consistency touch btw I was digging how focal dragons were to the entire game this time around.

And then the final bit. That SCENE. Rauru and Sonia channeling their power through Link, who was incredibly confused before he realized what they must be doing, and got SO determined. Turning Zelda back and even getting his own hand back in the process??? Insane to see. Zelda was so so loved by Rauru and Sonia despite only spending a short amount of time with them. And that just makes my heart hurt when we consider what actually happened.

And when Link falls unconscious, which is completely logical when you think about the fight he just went through, the altitude he was at, and channeling enough magic that it reversed the effects of an all powerful secret stone???? Yo he went through a LOT!

And he wakes up, already on the alert bc man is freefallin only to then realize that Zelda is back and she’s also falling. And she’ll hit the ground a lot sooner than he would at the rate they’re going.

Link couldn’t reach Zelda in the beginning of this entire thing. But this time? This time he not only reaches her hand, but he pulls her in close, shields her head as best as he can, and prepares them to hit the water. Once they do, he carries her out of the water. Gentle, oh so gently, laying her down and kneels over her as she begins to wake up.

And one of the first thing Zelda does as she wakes up is to take him in and looks him over to see if HE’S hurt. Just like she did in the beginning of the game. And everything click. They won. He defeated Ganondorf and she was granted the impossible by Rauru and Sonia to turn back into a human.

And Zelda IMMEDIATELY rambles on about everything. About how much has happened. How much she has to tell him.

And finally. Finally. She looks at him and smiles so fucking gently that it drives me INSANE with how much she obviously adores him, and says, “I’m home, Link. I’m home.”

Because home is right there. Right by his side. In this Hyrule that they’ve been rebuilding together. The one they lived the past half decade ish together in a house Link bought and traveled across Hyrule no matter what the issue was. In the Hyrule where she is so beloved by everyone.

Zelda is home.

[bittersweet-adagio]

SEASON 39 | ROUND 12

assassination(?)

THIS IS REAL FUCKING ASS I PUMPED IT OUT IN 15 MINUTES IM UNPREPARED THERES LIKE NO LORE PREPARATION FOR THIS FEEL FREE TO SEND ASKS. IM SORRY also this is gonna be so fucking embarrassing if people end up voting for flor in the last hour or so…

This is how it was always meant to end. 

Vera will admit, she doesn’t really want to do this. She knows it’ll haunt her for the rest of her life. Unforgiving, burning like a flame deep in her stomach, searing through her lungs and throbbing at her heart.

Ellie won. Part of Vera wishes she had lost, just so she wouldn’t have to do this herself.

Ellie was Vera’s best friend. Her first love. Her universe. Her everything. Guardian Kora would never approve of it, and she knew that very well.

Vera doesn’t have very long. It’ll be over soon. She lets the sound of her heels reverberate around the stadium, watching as both Flor and Ellie turn around at the sight of her in her bloody wedding dress. Flor must be shocked she isn’t dead, surely?

Guardian Kora requested there be a wait before the execution on stage. No security guards are currently present. They will be, soon. This means that Vera has to go through with it. She has to, otherwise she’ll die with Flor and disappoint her mother. Her family. She’ll die with no honor.

“Vera?” Ellie asks, her voice barely above a whisper. Her pink dress flows in the wind. The bun in her hair had gotten a bit messed up in the performance, but it’s still pretty. Isn’t it?

“Close your eyes, Ellie.” Vera walks closer, hand behind her back. 

“Why are you here? You- You can’t be here. You need to get off the stage or they’ll—“

“Close. Your. Eyes. I don’t want you to look at me, please. Please don’t look at me, I’m so sorry.” Both of her hands drop to her sides. She carries a gun, heavy in her palm as it trembles in her grip.

“What? No, what are you doing? What’s happening? Vera, you’re scaring me, this isn’t your performance, get off the—“

The gun is immediately pointed at Ellie’s head. Vera’s hand shakes, and it’s like the world disappears around her. Nobody else exists but Ellie. Her love, her princess.

Vera hates death. She hates dying. So why did Guardian Kora have to send her out to ANAKT Garden for this purpose? To spread the name of her channel, to spout rumors and clout? All press is good press, after all. But is this really what she had to do?

The guards are coming.

She can’t do it. This is what it was always meant to be like. Vera was scared of befriending Ellie, her target since the beginning, much less fall in love with her. It didn’t help what they did together in ANAKT. Vera had said, “I’d like it if you lied to me, just this once, and kissed me as if you wanted me. I really love you, Ellie, I do.”

And who was Ellie to refuse?

It had always been that way. Ellie never felt anything for Vera, and that’s what made it hurt. She lied because Vera wanted her to. And now, Vera couldn’t explain anything to Ellie. Or to Khoi. Or anyone, for that matter. She’s gonna go fucking insane.

Vera turns over to Flor, smiles, and tells her, “Congratulations on making it to your next round,” before shooting Ellie straight in the head and running off the stage entirely.

She can’t see, but she can hear, all the 

murmurs and the running of the guards. This probably was a shock to them, huh? Bet they wondered what all this was for, especially from a guardian that was neither of the current contestants.

Do they regret it as much as Vera? She should’ve just said no and run away back when Kora told her what she had to do. For the buzz, she said. For the popularity of the channel, she said. For the health and wellbeing of Vera’s siblings, she said.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She just fucking shot the love of her life because she can’t bear the thought of all those lives on the line. Why couldn’t she say no? She could’ve ran, escaped, taken Ellie with her. They could’ve been happy.

Tears stream down Vera’s face, hot against her skin. She doesn’t know how long she has to run. She knows she can’t see her siblings again. She knows that now her life is going to go to absolute shit and that she probably won’t live for even a day after this event. The Agency for the Recovery of Escaped Pet Humans is probably going to track her down. She won’t live. But isn’t that what she wanted?

Deep down, she knows that isn’t true. She wants to live, desperately.

That will never happen now.

She’s sorry. She really is.

She drops her gun on the floor and sprints for her life, teardrops and bloodshed staining her beautiful white dress as she hopes that she can live as long as she possibly could. That way, at least the love she had would live longer than the person she felt it for.

not tagging lore people bc i think everyones finding this… but i will tag @sotogalmo to say that flor’s reaction is vague on purpose so you can add what she does and also @season39 so yk what i uh… what i did…

[asha-mage]

Anaiya nodded. "We understand your reasons for disliking Elaida, even hating her. We do understand. But we must think of the Tower and the world. I confess I do not like Elaida myself. But then I have never liked Siuan either. It is not necessary to like the Amyrlin Seat. There is no need to glare so Siuan. You have had a file for a tongue since you where a novice and it has only roughened with the years. And as Amyrlin you pushed sisters where you wanted and only seldom explained why. The two do not make for a very likeable combination."

-The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 27: The Practice of Diffidence

Re-reading The Fires of Heaven has made me increasingly confident in the show's read of Siuan's character being book accurate (an opinion I originally articulated here). I always encourage re-reads of the books, but I would very much encourage re-reading The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven specifically if you are doubting the choices the team made in episode 7.

Cause the thing is, Siuan's central character flaw- the one Anaiya is trying to gently cite above, the one on heavy display all throughout both books via Siuans treatment of those around her, is her complete lack of trust paired with a willingness to force and browbeats others into doing what she thinks is best.

It is, ironically, a trait she shares with Rand- both are unafraid to use their power (physical, magical, political- what have you) to make others obey, and both also are unwilling to demonstrate trust and good faith out of a fear of showing weakness. It's something born inherently of their shared insecurities about their respective positions of power- Siuan's young rise to the Seat and the fact that she is carrying on her conspiracy with Moiraine and Rand's belief that he isn't strong enough/good enough/hard enough to be the Dragon Reborn alongside the tendency of the people he cares about to get hurt or have their lives ruined by simple proximity to him.

Throughout both The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven Siuan uses primarily tactics drawn form the same playbook that would later also lead Rand to disaster in the back half of the series: she comes to view those under charge more for their value to her agenda then as people she should be looking after, forcing Min to remain in the Tower against her will, refusing to make any effort to console or reassure those who care about Elayne (Gawyn, Galad, Morgase) that she is well, and engaging in many actions because their are expedient without regard for their moral implications (ordering Mazrim Taim's execution without trial, lying about Logain being set up by the Red Ajah, manipulation Logain so he has no choice but to follow along with her plan). And I don't think it's a mistake that many of those actions either lead to, or directly follow, Siuan's downfall in the Tower.

In fact, Siuan begins to make the turn in her character after encountering Mistress Tharne, which largely sets in motion Siuan's character arc for the remainder of the series: realizing that she can not force the word to conform to her will, not least of all because she is no longer the most powerful woman on the planet, but more over because it's wrong. Mistress Tharne's rough treatment of Siuan, her complete lack of respect or deference, is a wake call to Siuan that gives her empathy and understanding of the way she treated others when she held power. Much of her arc there after is about emphasizing that point, first as a stilled woman serving Aes Seadi, then as a restored but drastically weakened Aes Sedai.

In this way Siuan gets a taste of what it's like to be on the other side- forced and expected to obey, constantly fighting against a system rigged against her from the start, meant to keep her out of circles of power and away from the ability to make decisions as a woman who can not channel, and then as a Aes Sedai who does not stand high enough in the hierarchy. More over it gives her perspective on why things like the Oaths and the Tower's traditions matter- on the ways the Oaths protect ordinary people and the way Tower traditions like 'staying out of the business of other Aes Sedai' and 'respect secrets of individual sisters and Ajahs' help keep Aes Sedai working together and functional. But it's really her friendships, which she is able make on now even terms, with Nynaeve and Egwene, that help her gain empathy and understanding, and in particular allows her (via her mentorship of Egwene) to try and positively influence the Tower's future via reforms to make it more equitable, less mired and fractious and cracked.

As Amylrin, we're told, Siuan ruled by playing one faction in the Tower against another, widening the cracks between Ajahs and within them so that no one was able to effectively oppose her and her agenda- that is until someone came along who could rally support, to take advantage of those simmering frustrations and angers in order tear her down. But that person, Elaida, shared many of her faults and few of her virtues- instead of playing one faction against and brow beating, Elaida (with the Shadow's help) turned the Tower into armed camps ready to lash out at each other. Siuan's tendency (often cited by even herself) to send sisters to do penance on farms for opposing or annoying her, became Elaida using the same tool to humiliate and punish her enemies and using edicts to demote them to Accepted for being weak, and Siuan's precedent for keeping secrets and working around the Hall became Elaida plotting to kidnap Rand and 'make him supple' via Galina's embassy.

And it's a neat closing of the circle, the kind Jordan really likes to play with, that Siuan's redemption for this is her training of the woman who will replace both her and Elaida. Someone who will actually fulfill both women's ambitions of leading the Tower in the last battle- Egwene. Siuan's justice against Elaida is to help prepare an Amyrlin that will be more then either she or Elaida ever could- someone who will be free of their faults, who will be able to unite the Tower as both women dreamed of doing but never could- who can guide Rand and bind the nations to him, who can serve as a general of the Light strong enough to balance the worst of the Shadow. Siuan teaches Egwene how not to do the things she did, to fall into the traps that brought her down- the arrogance, the pride, the domineering, the compromises with her own morals- and it's that teaching which, in part, gives Egwene the ability to persuade the Tower that still saw her as a Novice....to raise her to Amyrlin of it's own accord.

Siuan still should have been allowed to kill Elaida though instead of the Suffa stuff, I will die on that hill.

[yeolsaintlaurent]

Nocturnal Reverie ch.11 [PCY]

pairing - chanyeol x fem reader

genre - mature, smut, angst

themes - power imbalance, romance, crime, justice, class divide, politics, sex

synopsis - In the sprawling, dystopian city of Emberhaven, where power and corruption reign supreme, the lives of two unlikely individuals collide in a tale of passion, intrigue, and moral reckoning. Chanyeol, an enigmatic and wealthy scion of the city's elite, finds himself captivated by the elusive Y/N, a cunning and resourceful thief who navigates the treacherous underworld of Emberhaven. Their first encounter, sparked by a chance meeting in a luxurious club called The Velvet Lounge, sets the stage for a whirlwind romance amidst a backdrop of crime, politics, and danger.

warnings - drug use

A/N - i am so so so glad to be back and writing. thank you for reading this series after my long ass hiatus. so many notifications kept popping up during the hiatus about likes and reblogs on Nocturnal Reverie and CVMF and it always made me smile and filled with joy. i am very grateful for all the readers new and old. as always, let me know what you think about this chapter. feedback is always welcome. love you all xx

Chapter 11: The Message

Y/N stirred awake in Chanyeol's bed, the sheets cool beside her where he should have been. She reached out instinctively but found only emptiness. Frowning, she glanced at the clock on the bedside table. 11 AM. He must have gone out early. Maybe he had things to take care of.

Yawning, she got up and padded toward the kitchen. Her cat, a sleek, black feline named Kat, greeted her with a purr and a brush against her legs. She picked him up, rubbing his belly affectionately. He purred louder, a comforting sound in the quiet apartment.

"Good morning, Kat," she murmured, setting him down to fill his bowls with wet food, dry food, and fresh water. He meowed appreciatively before diving into his breakfast.

Opening the fridge, Y/N found a carton of strawberry juice and took a long swig straight from it. She smiled to herself, enjoying the small luxuries of Chanyeol’s well-stocked kitchen. His fancy coffee machine caught her eye, and she decided to make herself a caramel macchiato. As the machine whirred to life, her thoughts wandered to Chanyeol.

She still knew so little about what he did for a living. He had mentioned something about cutting off his family and wanting to start a new life, but the details were vague. What could have been so important that he took such a drastic step? He had said it was something that didn’t align with his values, but why? And what exactly had he done?

The rich aroma of coffee filled the kitchen, snapping her out of her reverie. Her macchiato was ready. She poured it into a mug and carried it to the lounge, sinking into the plush couch. She turned on the TV, flicking through channels until she stopped at the news.

The headline on the screen made her freeze. "Apartment Fire in Emberhaven: Possible Arson." Her heart skipped a beat. The image of the burning building filled the screen. It was her apartment.

“Oh no,” she whispered, clutching the mug tightly. Whoever did this was sending her a message, and she received it loud and clear. Lucio’s men. It had to be them.

The reporter’s voice cut through her shock. "We have an interview with the lead investigator on the scene." The camera switched to a familiar face. Minseok.

“We believe the perpetrator is someone we’ve been monitoring for a long time,” Minseok said, his expression grim.

Y/N's mind raced. Was he talking about Lucio or her? She turned off the TV and leaned back, closing her eyes. Things were getting worse. She had to find a way to fix this before anyone else got hurt.

Reaching for her phone, she quickly sent a message to Kai. She waited for a response, but none came. As she was about to set her phone down, a notification popped up from a private number. Her heart pounded as she opened it.

"Come here at 10:30 PM tonight with the money and goods, and all will be forgiven", with a pin to what seemed to be an obscure alley leading to the docks.

A million thoughts raced through her mind. This could be her way out, but it could also be a trap. Whatever it was, it was her problem to solve, her burden to bear. She wouldn’t drag Chanyeol into this mess, not when she loved him as much as she did. She had to protect him, even if it meant facing the danger alone.

At the police station, Minseok sat behind his desk, the clutter of papers and case files spread before him. He was deep in conversation with a fellow officer about the fire when his phone rang, the harsh sound cutting through the room. He picked up the receiver, his expression hardening as the warden's grim voice crackled through the line.

"Lucio has escaped. Four of our officers are dead."

Minseok's face twisted in anger. "What the hell were you doing while this happened? How could you let a high-profile mobster away?" His voice was a mix of fury and disbelief.

The warden's response was muffled, but the weight of the news hit Minseok like a freight train. This was troubling beyond measure. He slammed the receiver down, his mind racing with the implications. They had to act fast.

Grabbing his cellphone, he dialed Kyungsoo. The phone barely rang twice before Kyungsoo answered.

"Lucio escaped," Minseok said without preamble. "We need to accelerate our plans. This is escalating faster than we anticipated."

Kyungsoo's voice was steady. "Understood. What do you need?"

"We need to find Lucio again, and fast. But there's more. The apartment that was torched—it was supposed to be abandoned. But the remains suggest someone was living there. A woman. I don’t think it is farfetched to assume that it could be the girl we saw during the sting."

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. Kyungsoo's mind raced. He had his suspicions about who she might be based on his conversations with Chanyeol, but he kept his voice neutral. "I'll handle the matter of the girl. It's my responsibility to find out more about her."

Minseok agreed, albeit reluctantly. "Fine. But I'm increasing the number of people in this case. We need to catch Lucio, and fast. Once we have him, we can move on to Dom."

"I'll keep you updated," Kyungsoo said before hanging up. He couldn't shake the feeling that things were about to get even more complicated.

Y/N stood in the dimly lit alley, the shadows swallowing her slight figure clad in all black. She checked her phone screen for the time—10:15 PM. The cold night air bit at her skin as she waited for any message from the unknown sender. She took a deep breath and sent her live location to Kai. She knew he had her back, no matter what. Their bond was forged in childhood, built on trust and countless shared secrets. She smiled at the thought of how she used to entrust him with her precious beanie baby toys and her weekly allowance.

Suddenly, the alley was flooded with bright headlights. She squinted against the harsh light, quickly tucking her phone into her boot. The car door creaked open, and she heard the unmistakable sound of heavy boots hitting the pavement.

"Well, well, well," a raspy, sarcastic voice drawled. "Look who decided to show up."

Y/N's heart raced. Lucio.

He stepped into the light, a sneer on his face, his eyes raking over her in a way that made her skin crawl. "You did the right thing, sweetheart," he said, his voice laced with crude amusement. "Now, why don't you come over here and give me that duffel bag? Nice and slow."

Y/N swallowed her fear and took a tentative step forward, clutching the bag tightly. "Here it is," she said, her voice steady despite the terror clawing at her insides. She approached Lucio, her eyes never leaving his.

Lucio's grin widened, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light. "That's it, nice and easy," he taunted, his voice dripping with condescension. "Gotta say, you clean up nice. It's a shame you're mixed up in all this."

Y/N forced herself to stay calm, to focus on the task at hand. She held out the duffel bag, but Lucio didn't take it right away. Instead, he reached out and ran a finger down her arm, making her shudder with revulsion.

"Such a brave little thing," he sneered, leaning in close. "But bravery won't get you far in this world, darling. Especially not with the kind of people you're dealing with."

She pulled back slightly, her eyes flashing with defiance. "Just take the bag and leave me out of this," she said, her voice firm.

Lucio chuckled, a dark, mocking sound. "Oh, I don't think so. You see, you're part of this now. And there's no getting out."

He finally took the bag from her, opening it to inspect the contents. His eyes lit up as he saw the money and the goods inside. "Well, well, you actually came through. I'm almost impressed."

Y/N took a step back, her heart pounding in her chest. "You got what you wanted. Never ever contact me again."

Lucio looked up from the bag, a sinister smile spreading across his face. "Not so fast, sweetheart. We need to have a little chat first. About your boyfriend."

Her blood ran cold. "What about him?"

Lucio's smile widened. "Oh, don't play dumb with me. You think I don't know who he is? What he is? Chanyeol’s got a lot of people interested in him. And now, because of him, they're interested in you too."

She tried to mask her fear with anger. "Leave him out of this. He has nothing to do with your business."

Lucio laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Oh! Is that what you think? How cute." He stepped closer, his eyes narrowing. "Get in the car while I'm still being nice," he said, his voice dripping with fake politeness.

Y/N's heart raced. "Fuck you! And what if I refuse?" she challenged, her voice steady despite the fear gripping her.

Lucio's expression darkened, the sarcasm vanishing. "Then your little lover will get hurt. A lot. I'll make sure of it."

As he spoke, Y/N's hand slowly reached toward the knife in her right boot. But before she could react, two large figures appeared from the shadows behind her, grabbing her roughly. She struggled, but they overpowered her easily, throwing her into the car.

Lucio smirked to himself as he turned and got into the car next to Y/N. By now, her hands and feet were tied, and a strip of tape was plastered across her mouth. She thrashed around, desperate to free herself, but it was no use.

"Quiet down," Lucio ordered, his voice cold. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small bag of white powder. He poured it onto a tray in front of him and meticulously cut lines into the cocaine. As the car started moving, he rolled up a 100 bill and snorted a line.

Lucio then turned toward Y/N, gesturing the rolled-up bill toward her as if to offer some. She angrily turned away, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

Her mind raced, searching for a way out. She glanced at Lucio, who seemed momentarily lost in his drug-induced haze. Despite her terror, she knew she had to stay calm and wait for the right moment to escape. Her life, and possibly Chanyeol's, depended on it.

As the car came to a halt, the tires crunching over the gravel, Y/N felt a shiver run down her spine. Lucio, still engrossed in his cocaine-fueled haze, clumsily opened the door and gestured for her to follow. The two large figures who had been his enforcers stepped out first, their imposing forms casting long shadows in the dim light.

Y/N was pulled roughly from the car, the cold night air biting at her skin. She was led toward a large, dilapidated building that loomed ominously in the distance. As they approached, the grandeur of the structure became more apparent despite its current state of decay.

It was an old theatre, its faded grandeur hinting at a time when it had been the heart of cultural life. The exterior was crumbling, with ivy creeping up the walls and broken windows revealing glimpses of the interior. The building’s once-majestic façade was now scarred with neglect, but it still retained an air of faded opulence.

The men pushed Y/N inside, and she stumbled into the grand foyer. The interior was a ghostly echo of its former self: ornate chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their crystals coated in dust; velvet drapes lined the walls, tattered and moth-eaten; and the remnants of plush seating lay scattered about, some torn and others still surprisingly intact.

Lucio led her through the foyer, his footsteps echoing off the high ceilings. The grandeur of the theatre’s stage was revealed as they entered the main hall. Despite the dust and cobwebs, the stage retained its regal charm, with its once-brilliant red curtains now hanging in tatters and the remnants of a lavishly decorated backdrop partially visible.

Y/N was brought to the centre of the stage, her heart pounding with anxiety. The vast space around her seemed empty and imposing. Lucio’s men roughly tied her to a sturdy wooden chair placed in the middle of the stage, securing her wrists and ankles with thick rope. A strip of tape was placed over her mouth, effectively silencing any protests or pleas for help.

Lucio stood at the edge of the stage, his presence looming over her. He gazed around the old theatre with a smirk, clearly amused by the contrast between its former splendour and its current state of decay.

“Now,” Lucio said, his voice dripping with false politeness, “we’re going to move on to the more important part of our business. I suggest you make yourself comfortable, though I doubt you’ll be enjoying the show.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small bag of white powder. He dipped into it with a tiny golden spoon. After snorting it, he turned toward Y/N with a mocking gesture, offering her some.

Y/N turned her head away in disgust, her anger and fear battling for control. Lucio’s smirk widened as he took another hit.

“Just so you know,” he said, his tone growing darker, “if you don’t cooperate, Chanyeol will be the one to suffer. I can make sure of that, believe me.”

He then gestured for the men to leave the stage, and they exited, their footsteps fading into the distance. The theatre’s oppressive silence enveloped Y/N, amplifying her sense of isolation.

Alone on the stage, Y/N surveyed her surroundings with a mix of hope and desperation. The grandeur of the theatre, despite its decay, might hold some hidden opportunities. She had to stay calm and find a way to escape, both for herself and for Chanyeol.

As Y/N remained tied to the chair, the echoes of Lucio’s footsteps grew fainter, leaving her alone in the oppressive silence of the abandoned theatre. The dim light from a single overhead bulb flickered intermittently, casting long shadows that danced across the stage. Her thoughts raced with plans for escape, but for now, she had to wait.

Outside, the night air was crisp and cool, and the city lights shimmered faintly in the distance. Unbeknownst to Y/N, Chanyeol was pacing anxiously in his upscale apartment, his mind a whirlwind of worry. The usual calm of his surroundings did little to soothe his nerves, especially with Y/N missing and the fire at her apartment still fresh in his mind.

Chanyeol’s phone buzzed on the glass coffee table, pulling him from his anxious thoughts. He picked it up, expecting a message from Y/N or a far-fetched text from Kai. Instead, the screen displayed a single notification from an unknown number.

He tapped on it, and the message that appeared was cryptic and chilling:

“If you want her back, you need to act fast. Tonight’s performance is just the beginning. Come to the old theatre at midnight. Time is running out.”

Chanyeol’s heart raced as he read the message, his face going pale. The gravity of the situation hit him like a freight train. The old theatre—he knew where that was. The message was a sinister hint about what was to come, and the urgency in its words made his stomach churn.

He quickly glanced at his watch; it was already past ten-thirty. There was no time to waste. Chanyeol’s mind raced as he grabbed his coat and headed for the door. His phone buzzed again, but he didn’t have time to check it. He had to get to the theatre and figure out what Lucio had planned.

The apartment was left in chaotic disarray as Chanyeol rushed out, his pulse pounding in his ears. He had to find Y/N before it was too late. The message had made one thing painfully clear: the night was far from over, and the real danger was just beginning.

[tae-rambles]

Apologies if this was answered, but what are your thoughts/analysis about the natural way Oda portrays characters internalizing/repeating beliefs from others? Such as when Law word for word told Tashigi what Doflamingo had told him regarding "the weak not choosing how they die". It was rather baffling, because though Law and Doflamingo may share the "same eyes", to reiterate anything, even if true/you agree with, that someone you truly hate had said feels foreign to me (particularly because it doesn't necessarily feel like a scene where a victim hurts others the same way they were hurt?). Secondly, the amount of scenes Luffy has talking about his dislike for "weak people" or "crying" (Shirahoshi). I know Luffy had similar sentiments when meeting Shanks but to me, everytime he repeats it, I just see Ace talking. It almost feels like a subconscious way of holding onto a part of Ace. Interested to know any other instances you noticed!

Heyo, thank you for the ask and sorry for the very late reply. I was busy and then just kept getting distracted.

To talk about the scene with Law and Tashigi we first need to keep in mind that at that point, Doflamingo was basically living rent free in Law's head as he was so focused on taking revenge on him which must have triggerd a barrage of intense emotion of hatred, pain and fear on his psyche making him slip back into his sadistic habits that he gained after the Flevance genocide. So it isn't so far fetched that he subconsciously quoted the man he saw as an inspiration for three years when his mind was most vulnerable for manipulation. However, Law puts his own twist to the meaning of this quote. when Doflamingo says "the weak do not have the right to choose how they die", he uses it to justify murder. But when Law says it, he uses it to refuse Tashigi's request to kill her. "Murder isn't my style. I'm a doctor" (- Law in ch 918) - a principle he inherited from his parents and regained after Rosinante saved him and both his literal and metaphorical heart. In conclusion, Law saying that to Tashigi was a reflection of both the people who had the most influence on his minds and actions during the whole Dressrosa saga. The words may be the same as Doflamingo's but the heart of the message carry Rosinante's love - just like Law who acts aloof and grumpy on the outside but actually has a soft heart.

When it comes to Luffy hating "crybabies", i do believe he got those words to express his feelings from Ace. I'd also like to point out that all the characters Luffy told that too were younger than him (Koby, Shirahoshi, Momonosuke) so you could say he channeled Ace's big brother energy in those instances. But it is also important to point out that unlike Ace, who would scowl at Luffy when reprimanding him for being a "crybaby" or a "weakling" (note: this is not a dis on Ace, he was going through a lot and his bad attitude is understandable), Luffy has a big grin on his face (with Koby and Shirahoshi at least, i don't remember how exactly he was with Momo, i'd have to re-read, sorry) which indicates there's no real heat behind his words since we also know what it looks like when he actually hates someone (Luffy's expressions can be scary sometimes but it's also often times very deserved reaction).

There are plenty more instances of characters internalizing and repeating beliefs of others since inherited will is one of One Piece's main themes. Some examples off the top of my head:

Luffy's idea of what a pirate is came from Shanks

Nami's soft spot for children and love of tangerines inherited from Bell-Mère

Franky's "existence is not a crime" from Tom's speech about building ships/weapons

Iceburg revitalizing Water 7's economy by founding Galley-La like Tom did by building the sea train

Robin's love of history and her determination to preserve it from the scholars of Ohara

Shirahoshi refusing to hate humans to preserve Otohime's wish for the future

Chopper wanting to become the greatest doctor inspired by Hiriluk

Sanji refusing to kick women and fight with his hands to honor Zeff

Bonney believing in Nika like Kuma

Rebecca refusing to fight offensively to fulfill Scarlett's wishes of not staining her hands with blood

Yamato being inspired by Oden to seek his own freedom

Roger inspiring many to strive to become the Pirate King

and many more... i'd be here forever if i were to name all of them

Hope that satisfies your question and i'm again really sorry it took so long for me to answer

[gingerlurk]

Lovers' Crest | Chapter 8: The Heist

Din Djarin x f!Reader

Masterlist

Summary: The plan really isn’t all that complicated. It’s just wildly dangerous and leaves plenty to chance…

Word count: 4.3k

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, slow burn, non-canon (the Razor Crest never gets destroyed, it also gets upgraded with a cabin), canon-typical violence, eventual smut/filth, post season 3, canon-typical violence, dry humping if you squint, loads of action, cliffhanger.

A/N: Thank you for reading!

--

Torre is ninety percent sure she is in love with that tin can buzzkill, though it perplexes him why. He’s also completely certain that it is reciprocated and knows the two of them haven’t admitted it to each other. If even to themselves.

The argument was an interesting listen. She’s just as emotionally repressed now as back then, unwilling or unable to accept any kind of esteem that isn’t coated in caveats and conditions. She also can’t stand having her intentions misunderstood.

He’s ninety percent sure, but he’s decided to shoot his shot anyway.

Start with touch, he thinks to himself, but go easy. It’s her primary love language, which is why she resists it so often. But she’s caught up in the job, letting him brush a hand on an elbow or pressing shoulders as they work. His hope is that it reaches into her subconscious and connects to what they used to have. It’s still in there; he can feel it. It’s why he’s letting go of the past, for her and what you two had.

‘You know, hon,’ he sighs, leaning his head on the wall by the panel she’s working at. ‘I was already watching you in that cantina, sitting in that booth with the weird green kid?’

‘Torre,’ she grits through the phase driver in her teeth. ‘Tryin’ t’concentrate.’

‘Oh please, you could do that in your sleep.’ He gets more comfortable. ‘I don’t think I’d actually recognised you at that point, but you still drew me in. Something you carry, dove. Something in you. I was honest to gods working up to go over to talk to you, before I even knew it was you…’ 

Torre touches her elbow, mutters her name. ‘What are the odds, huh? The same bar? The same day? After all this time? It must have been meant to be.’

A crackle from the panel and the lock cycles. She just gathers her tools and moves.

‘Another down, four to go,’ she says, waits for the hatch to slide and slips through. He ducks in behind her, crowding her subtly, and it hushes closed again. She doesn’t pause, just strides ahead.

Have patience, Torre tells himself. Pick your moment. He follows.

--

Din stews in anger, worry and regret.

Anger at Torre, as he’d watched him on the system vision move about you and take every excuse to touch you. Worry about the inbound smallcraft, detected on the scope moments after you’d dropped into the shield deck where comms were cut. Whatever that ship was, it wasn’t part of the plan.

And regret, a potent and searing regret that set in almost the second you’d turned away from him and marched off into the throws of the heist. It had doused him hard. Why had he done that? Accused you like that? Said all that after, to agree to partner with you, he’d made you share maybe your worst memory. Bare yourself to him. And it hadn’t even been to persuade him to let you work with him. He was already going to say yes. But he just wanted to know.

So he’d asked you. And you’d told him. And then he’d gone and used it to hurt you.

He wants to settle into mentally lashing himself but has to push it aside for now. Because this inbound craft is setting alarm bells to screaming in his mind and hot panic to washing through his body. He thinks he knows that beacon.

And he can’t fucking warn you because the treasury had obliterated comms with some kind of scramble set up around where the shields were housed. He’s not even sure you’ve noticed. Torre hadn’t told either of you that you’d lose channels on the shield deck, and Din had foolishly missed it, too clouded by rage and jealousy and… hurt.

It was R5 who’d spotted it. Too late to do anything about it though, and Din had thumped the console so hard the nervous droid had bleeped and whirred up a frenzy.

Now, he glares at the readings cascading around him, and decides.

He pulls up the ship holo on his vambrace. It’s not the live one, but he can still plot a direct line. Fuck any patrols he runs into. He has to get to you. Din lays down a litany of orders at the still chattering droid as he whirls from his chair and storms out of the cockpit.

--

You near your final door, ducking into a small alcove to await a passing patrol. By your own inner orientation, you’re roughly below and one corridor over from the first lock you’d passed. It’s taken forever but you’d met no company at all.

You’re almost impressed with Torre on this one. Then a hand lands on the small of your back and the impatience returns. You want this over. Want back on the Crest so you can apologise to Mando and tell him exactly how you feel, about everything.

The slap of several dozen boots echoes by. Quiet again, you move to the panel and get to work. Despite Torre’s claim you could do it sleeping, the procedure to circumvent the security is fiddly as shit.

Once you lightsaw into the doorplate, you have to find the surge protector unit – designed to accept any excess electrical load – and set your decoder keys to build your cypher. You have to watch both carefully at the same time, because once the surge opens, it is a matter of seconds to reroute the power flow and slip the interlocking latches over your fabricated code.

Then you wrench the lot free and it’s Torre’s job to jam a reseal protocol into the opening. It gives you three seconds to get through, before its locked tight again.

But you’d gotten quicker at it with the mandatory practice and it’s not taking long. You’re running the keys steadily, caught up in the sensation of mechanical parts moving to your will, when you hear an unexpected sound that makes your blood run cold.

Boots. Heavy, rapid boots thundering down a corridor to your right. Straight toward you. Torre hears it and swears.

He turns to you. ‘Shit, another patrol?’ his eyes are wild, uncontrolled. A different side of him. ‘We have to move!’

You don’t answer, trying to focus on getting this damn door open so you can escape whatever is about to barrel into your stowaway party.

‘Hurry up!’ he barks. It does not help. You drop your phase driver and swear.

‘Shut up,’ you say. But the sound of boots smacking the deck is getting closer and Torre is panicking next to you. He pulls a detonator from a pocket and readies it.

‘What the hells are you—’ you start right as he says, ‘Time’s up,’ and moves to toss it at the rear archway. With one hand still decoding the lock, you reach to grab it off him. But you’re too clumsy and, just as the lock gives way and the door clips open for its programmed few seconds, the bomb skitters to the side, beeps increasing.

Despite all that, you don’t duck through the door. Because in that moment the thundering footsteps round the corner – and it’s not a guard. You twist from your escape route and stare, hearing the lock engage again behind you and Torre cursing from the other side. 

‘Fuck! Shit!’ Calling your name. But you’re lunging into the vicinity of the explosion.

‘Mando!’ you shout. ‘Look o—’ He’s barrelling into you, arms raised to your head, just as the hallway erupts.

Deafening and painful reverb knocks you senseless as you tumble in every conceivable direction. Battered from every side, you try to just tuck yourself inwards and wait for the blackness to wipe you out.

It all stops suddenly and through the ringing cacophony, you assess where you are at.

You’re flat on your back, legs akimbo and elbows tucked in, hands pressed into the hard surface above you. Through blurry vision, it looks to you like part of the ceiling has caved in. You take a second to wonder why you aren’t being crushed to death when a deep throb in your cunt snaps you into focus.

Mando is on top of you, arms braced by your head and whole body straining to hold up the debris across his back. Your hands are flat against his cuirass, legs spread around his hips, and your now pulsing centre is pressed directly into his groin.

His helmet is by your ear and you are assailed by harsh pants and grunts pouring into you. He shifts some and the applied pressure sparkles on your clit.

What the fuck is wrong with you? You blink hard and shake yourself, trying to focus on the direness of the situation and not on how good this feels. Trying to not writhe and press yourself into him. Mando grunts your name and you die a little.

He says it again and then, ‘Can you-- can you move?’

‘Uh-’ you wiggle a little, oh fuck it’s unbearable. You flex your feet and find a small bit of purchase. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Can you slide out and push this off me? I- I can’t shift without it toppling further.’ He can’t possibly have a clue what he’s doing to you, because as he adjusts the bearing of his arms, he presses himself harder into the apex of your thighs. You can’t stop yourself and cry out, even whine a little. ‘Shit, are you hurt?’  

‘A- ah, no, no, I don’t think so. It’s just, j-just so tight,’ you all but whimper.

‘I’m gonna try to lift some, then you move, okay?’ He’s making small movements again and you’re absolutely spare. ‘On three, okay?’

‘Okay, okay,’ you’re pressing your head into the solid floor and trying to will yourself out of this exquisite feeling. The man’s suffering, for gods’ sake. This is so wrong. 

‘One, two… three!’ He bears down on you for one second and you grit your teeth as hard as you can as an unbidden but forceful orgasm rushes through you. You try to make your ‘Hhhnnnh,’ sound like the effort of moving. 

As he lifts himself, you push and shimmy across the floor, wriggling up and up Mando’s body and feeling every single inch where you make contact sizzle with lust.

‘Good, you’re doing good,’ Mando is saying between heavy breaths and fuck you wish he’d stop. ‘Almost there.’ 

Sliding free, you pivot onto your knees and crouch low to get a shoulder under the panelling that had trapped the two of you.

‘On three again,’ you pant, sounding unnatural and husky to your own ears. You count in and heave upwards, your pleasure-frazzled body making a clumsy effort. But between the two of you, there’s enough give to let Mando scramble out. He gets free just as you drop the heavy weight. He orients himself and sits, facing away from you, to heave deep breaths.

He lays a hand on the floor and looks over his shoulder, ‘You okay?’

You, resting on your knees and heels, huff out a near crazed laugh. 

‘Yeah,’ you say, unable to keep the panting from your response. ‘Thanks.’

You both take a moment to let your breathing even out, which bounces around the demolished corridor in a way you find intoxicating. You’re just closing your eyes to let it sink into you when reality floods back in.

‘Shit!’ you say, leaping to your feet. You lunge at the doorway Torre had vanished through. He’s gone, nothing on the other side but a silent passageway. ‘That fucker.’ 

Mando steps up behind you. ‘He’s the least of our problems,’ he mutters, right in your ear again. 

You will yourself to calm down, turning to him. ‘What’s--?’

‘Another ship is docking, probably boarding by now,’ he says, moving to the side of the door and checking your handiwork. ‘How long will this last?’

‘Well,’ you say, motioning at the timer on your bracer. ‘It’s supposed to hold until we’re off this ship, but…’ you trail off, feeling lost and self-conscious as the plan falls apart. 

But Mando is moving into action, he punches at his own wrist and the entire ship winks into existence across his forearm. You stare at it.

‘How did you…?’ you ask.

‘Downloaded it off Torre’s terminal while he was distracted,’ he says. The while flirting brazenly with you part goes unspoken.

You just mutter a small ‘nice,’ and move in to look at the map.

‘Here,’ you point. ‘We can circle back on this path and get to the vault.’ Mando’s head snaps up at you.

‘What?’ he hisses. ‘No, we are getting off this ship now.’ He swipes a hand across the map so it whizzes to the Crest, then marks it as a waypoint. He starts to move off but you grab his elbow. Electricity crackles against your palm and when he spins back to you, he’s so close again you can hear his breathing.

‘We’re so close,’ you say, unsure why you can’t let go of this mission. ‘This new ship doesn’t change the fact you have to get that beskar back. Does it?’ He stands rigid in front of you.

Confused by Mando’s indecision, you just try to look imploring. He takes you in. You know it’s completely impossible, but you feel like his face is softening. Into a tenderness. And a hunger. Like he’s drinking you down, taking all of you. It draws you back to what it felt like when you were underneath him. 

It becomes too much, so you drop your gaze. ‘Please,’ you whisper. ‘We have to try, right?’

He seems to give in, lifts the ship map again. You realise you’re still gripping his elbow and let go so he can reset the waypoint.

‘This way, then,’ he says, moving with you.

Sprinting down the corridor, you can see the vault door wide open, jolting back and forth against an armoured guard’s crumpled body. You and Mando skid to a halt at the entrance and see Torre on his knees, shoving credits and precious metals into a satchel. He looks up.

‘Hey!’ he straightens, has the gall to look relieved. ‘You made it! Sweet. Hey, Mando.’

You move to lay into him but Mando shoves past you and, with a yelp from Torre, lifts your ex-heist partner by the lapels and shoves him into a row of lockboxes. Torre paws at his arms and kicks weakly before finding some composure. 

‘Hey now, hey!’ he tries for purchase against the shelves, lifts himself some to avoid choking. ‘We can still finish this together – I have the code for the escape pods, remember?’

You step up beside the two of them, start nudging at the pockets you can reach on Torre.

‘I’m sure we can handle that ourselves,’ you say, enjoying yourself for a moment.

‘No! No, no, no,’ he pants. ‘Same deal- same deal at before, locked- to me, only me. Look!’ eyes to the side, ‘there’s your prize! I’ve got it all ready to go. Look!’ His knuckles are white against Mando’s armour and his eyes are rolling back.

But you and Mando look and see a satchel sitting open, the beskar bars stacked neatly inside.

You sneer. ‘You were gonna take it, weren’t y—’ You’re cut off by Mando dropping him to the ground. ‘What’re you?’ But you notice the urgent beeping of R5 coming from his vambrace. Mando checks it and twists to grab the satchel, throwing it over a shoulder.

‘Time to go,’ he commands.

You don’t question it, just follow, sensing Torre get to his feet, grab the loot and stumble after you.

With the timing thrown out and your path interrupted by Torre’s stupidity, there’s no choice but to confront a patrol to get to your escape.

As the three of you charge a squad of ten, you can’t help dropping a sarcastic ‘so much for fast and quiet,’ into Torre’s ear. He returns a shrug and smile, misreading your state.

‘Fun though?’ he says as he expertly grapples a stunned fighter and locks their airway before shoving them aside.

You roll your eyes, ducking into a forward tumble on the floor to twist up another solider at the knees with your feet, pushing the stumbling figure into Torre to execute the same move.

A rough hand on your shoulder yanks you up and you start for a second. But it lets go with a yelp. You turn to see Mando slamming the grabber into the wall so hard it leaves a dent there. He lifts the limp body and hurls it into two others.

You move to his back, pressing shoulder blades to cover his six while he douses the two stumbling figures with a gout of flame. A guard moves in to assault you with the sparking tip of his weapon and you reach your arms up, gripping Mando’s shoulders and lifting your feet. He braces you easily so you can plant one foot hard into the on-comer’s chest as the other toes at the weapon to force it into his face. His forward momentum and absolute surprise at the move lets the electric current catch him fully. He jolts and crumples. 

Just as the body hits the deck, Torre ducks in and grabs the baton, taking it up and – with a flourish – landing it home in the centre mass of another assailant.

Mando shoves you around. Confused for a second, it evaporates as you hear the familiar sound of blaster fire glancing off beskar. You grab his arm to look around and see the three final squad members hunched in the edges of an archway, weapons free.

Mando backs you up, up, until you have cover.

‘Stay down for a sec, okay?’ he says. He waits for your nod. Then he turns back to the onslaught, tugging detonators off his belt. You spot a downed foe feet from you and risk a hasty scramble to take up its blaster, trying to lay down cover fire.

You notice Torre on the other side of your arch, doing the same thing. He glances at you with a ‘what’s his play?’ look but you just focus back on the stalking shape of Mando. He takes a ruthless amount of firepower before leaping forward, hurling the hot little devices into the feet of the enemy.

An ear-splitting bang fills the hall with smoke. You huddle for a second before a hand is at your shoulder, offering you an arm up. You take it and get to your feet, a quip on the tip of your tongue before you see it’s Torre holding your hand.

‘Nice,’ he huffs. ‘Quite the team, aren’t we?’

You tug your hand back just as Mando emerges from the smoke to step flush with the two of you. 

‘We’re running out of time,’ he says.

‘Let’s go then,’ you say, laying a hand on his elbow as you move past. Mando reciprocates with a palm between your shoulders, where you’d leaned your weight into him mere moments before. He may as well be consuming your entire body.

You will the feeling aside for later and dash pass the three incinerated bodies.

It’s a few minutes of running and pivoting, following Mando’s barked commands of ‘left!’, ‘ahead!’, ‘third corridor!’ before you sense that you’re finally nearing the escape vessels.

‘Straight on, then right!’ he shouts.

Nearly out of here.

But you round the bend to find company waiting. Yet another troop stood staunch and ready.

Torre turns, ‘Shit! Where’s he gone!’

You look around and feel a flash of panic as you don’t see Mando. He’s no longer with you. He was here a second ago! Confused and distressed, you whip back to take in the eight menacing bodies of armour – half with blasters trained on you, the other half readying shock batons. With no choice, you raise your arms. Maybe you can buy some time t--

The Mandalorian strides around the corner at the opposite end of the passageway, taking them at the rear in the span of a heartbeat. All eight guards zero in on him like filings to a magnet. They’re barking orders and unleashing a hellish assault as Mando whips up a tempest.

And it’s like they’ve completely forgotten about you.

Before you can move, Torre grabs your arm and drags you to an escape hatch. The doors of each one are stood wide thanks to his programming. You wrench out of his grasp and shoot daggers at him, ‘What are you d--?'

‘Come with me!’ Torre holds out a hand with one foot inside the pod. Booty slung across his shoulder and blue eyes sparkling with his plea. In the flickering light he looks just like the boy you knew.

You look with panic to Mando, who is holding one guard in an elbow hold while another pummels his back and shoulders. He grunts and hurls the first, now limp, body into the others. He twists around to find where you are, spotting the scene of you standing next to Torre with his arm stretched toward you.

‘He’ll be fine, just come! Come now!’

It’s enough. The split second of distraction the sight brings is enough to let an attacker jam a shock prod into Mando’s side. He convulses and drops to a knee. A second jab with the rod and he slumps. 

‘No!’ You sprint toward the skirmish, faintly hearing the hiss and click of the pod latch behind you. You slow only to tug a blaster out of a felled guard’s hand.

Mando is on his hands and knees and you use the clear path to land shots on two of them. As one body begins to drop you drive into it with all your force, scattering the three remaining who trip and stumble out of the way.

Scrambling to the disoriented form of your partner, you get an arm under his and heave him toward another hatch standing open, kicking the satchel of beskar ahead of you. The weight and strain pulls the muscles of your hip and sides, which all start screaming in protest. You’re about to collapse when that thing you fear grows inside you and pushes against the strain. 

You let it, feeling the inhuman power drag you forwards.

Mando is through the door and shoved into a seat and the beskar is hurled in behind. All you have to do is throw yourself in there too and somehow get the latch closed—

A hard, metal arm hooks around your throat and drags you backwards. You try to grip the door jam but whatever created that furnace inside you has snuffed out and you flail in vain as you’re pulled from the pod.

In that one desperate second, you make a choice.

You grip the guard’s forearm and tighten it against your neck, throwing him off balance just enough to lift both feet in the air and slam a heel into the control panel, launching the pod. Through the stars that erupt across your vision, you briefly glimpse your Mandalorian sit up and lunge for the door, but it’s already falling away from the side of the ship.

A searing pain screams out of your shoulder, against your neck, and everything goes black.

--

He doesn’t even reach the door before the little emergency vessel lurches into an unstable spin and Din has to stagger back into the control seat, needing to push all thought of you aside. Not for long though.

Gripping the controls he strains against the torque, dangling precariously to the side for a second as the pod sways against the ignition thrusters. After a brief, stomach-churning struggle, he manages to nudge the thrust into stable motion. 

He jams on the comms, the image of you being yanked away flooding back in.

‘R5, do you copy!’ he yells. The beep of binary comes back instantly.

‘I’m sending a vessel code. Find me and set its coordinates to the new rendezvous I’m transmitting now, then meet me there.’

Affirmative nonsense chirps back and Din feels the small craft’s momentum change from aimless plummeting to following a clear trajectory.

He collapses back and tries to settle his ragged breathing. His pounding heart. Nothing to do now but wait.

Din crashes into the tiny villa with ferocious intent, but he’s too late. The data table lies empty, the input panel smashed to smithers. Torre has already been here, and he’s made damn sure to cover his tracks. Din glances to the side and sees your final discarded meal, cold and congealing like so much desperation.

He gives himself one second to slam a fist into the wall. Then he notches the scanner on his visor and takes in the surroundings, stalking back into the street. The town is too busy to make out any genuine set of tracks. He could try to—

Wait. What is he doing anyway? He doesn’t want to find Torre. He needs to find you.

But that treasury, after an incursion like their heist, would have changed course by now. Its security protocols are taking it far out of Din’s reach. He could track it down eventually, but what would happen to you while he does that? What’s happening to you right now? He fights despair, feels it rising to drown him. With every passing second, he is less and less able to stop it.

He kicks himself. Just do something. Go get Grogu, that’s the first step. Do that and then figure out the next…

He thinks of his son. A wild, desperate idea comes to him and he sprints in the direction of the Crest.

--

Prev | Next

******

Yeah so I stole Din's moves from the show, but I figure they worked for him then, so why wouldn't he use them again?

[suguwu]

lover be good to me: part one

You meet Kita Shinsuke on a rainy summer day, with a sea of hydrangeas swirling at your feet. You know him instantly, as only a soulmate can. He seems like a good man. Like a good soulmate.

But it's your wedding day.

minors and ageless blogs do not interact.

pairings: kita shinsuke x f!reader, oc x f!reader

notes: this fic has been a long time coming—it's basically my baby at this point. i'm so excited to finally get to share part one with you! i am so thankful for everyone who has sat thru me yelling about this to them. and a million thank yous to my beta, between your enthusiasm for this fic and all your help with it—i don't know if it could have been done without you!

title and part title are from hozier's "be" and "nfwmb"

tags for this part: soulmate au (first words), this is a very reader-centric story, very significant reader x oc, slow burn, hurt/comfort, pining, alcohol consumption, anxiety.

see main fic tags here.

wc: 13k

The hydrangeas are in full bloom.

You can see them through the window: the sea in each blossom, the radiant blue of them veined through with white, ocean and foam detailed in petals. They nod with the rain, weighed down by the fat droplets. 

There are two men that keep passing through the sea of hydrangeas like ships, leaving little eddies of blooms in their wake. They must be vendors considering they’re weighted down by boxes, though neither seems bothered by their load. 

You watch them for a moment. They’re both efficient, unbothered by the slow, steady drizzle. You rest your chin on your cupped palm, eyes drawn to the shorter man. There’s a few strands of hair peeking out from beneath his hat, the hazy gray of it—black-tipped like thunderclouds—an odd contrast to his lean, toned body. 

He makes his way through the courtyard, and you lean forward to keep him in sight, your nose almost pressed against the foggy window pane. He steps carefully around a drooping hydrangea bloom, his calm face visible for the first time, and something threads through you for a breath unraveling too quickly for you to place. 

He ducks beneath the eaves and out of your sight. 

Just in time, too. The rain picks up drumming gently against the ground, carrying a few loosened petals with it. The other man—broader and taller but no less graceful for it—spits out a curse. He hurries forward until he too is gone from view. 

“Told you it would rain,” Abe says from behind you, making you yelp. She presses in next to you. Her breath billows over the window pane blooming hazy against it, a marine fog. 

“You did,” you say with a laugh. “So did the weather channel. Almost a full week before you did.”

She scoffs. “Yes, but that’s their job. Mine was sheer instinct.”

“And listening to the weather channel?”

“Must you slander me?”

“Yes,” you say, smiling, but your gaze returns to the courtyard where the hydrangeas are bleeding petals under the rain’s heavy cut. 

“Are you nervous?”

You meet Abe’s gaze in the reflection of the window pane. Her dark eyes are warm and soft, and maybe a little bit sad. 

“Should I be?” you ask.

She wraps a small hand around yours and you realize you’ve been tapping your nail against your water glass, a crystalline symphony. 

“No,” she says firmly. “You shouldn’t.”

Warmth blooms in your chest, sprouts like flowers between the cracks in the concrete. You lean into her. She sighs, long and put-upon, but she tilts towards you, opens her body to you. It’s an invitation you know well. You rest your head in the crook of her shoulder and stare out the window.

“Yeah,” you say. “You’re right.”

“Always am.”

“That’s debatable, Natsu.” 

She grumbles but starts to pull away without comment when the kimono stylist calls out for her. She pauses for a moment. She leans in and adjusts your shiromuku carefully, her fingers deft. Then she squeezes your hand softly, familiar and warm, like a song you’ll always know. You squeeze back. 

You watch her reflection in the window until it blurs at the edges. She’s already bickering with Yoshikawa by the time it fades entirely from the foggy windowpane, their voices carrying. You’re sure that they’re curled together over Yoshikawa’s phone, flicking through the itinerary you’ve already forgotten most of. 

There’s movement beyond the window and you perk up as the man from before walks by. He’s kept under the eaves by the increased rain, and you can see the way it’s dampened his hair to something closer to slate.

There’s a gleam of amber above the boxes he’s carrying; the briefest flash of his eyes, bright and keen. He sweeps by the window almost close enough to touch, and you press your fingertips against the cool pane without thinking. 

It’s this closeness that lets you see his phone—a flip phone, of all things, with a little charm you can’t quite make out dangling from it—slip from his pocket. You wince as it drops out of view. 

He keeps going though, utterly unfazed. The rain has overshadowed the noise you realize, and you’re darting outside before you even know it, the shoji rattling slightly from your force. The summer humidity rolls over you, so stark against your aircon-chilled skin that you shiver with it. 

“You dropped your phone!” you call out after the man, hurrying along the engawa to scoop it up, careful of your shiromuku’s hem. The tiny charm is a stylized stalk of rice, you realize, the little panicles at the top colored with shimmering golden paint. It’s cute. A little at odds with his utilitarian flip phone, but cute nonetheless.

Ahead of you, the man goes still.

He’s turning around when his name unfurls inside of you. 

The movies hadn’t said it was anything like this.

There’s no passion ripping through you like forest fire, no lightning strike sizzling his name into your very bones. It’s slow and soft, like slipping into bathwater after a long, hard day, the heated kiss of it a balm against all of your bruises. Like the bloom of the first crocuses, a promise of spring after the long winter. 

“Oh, Shinsuke,” you breathe, and you think you’ve never known a name so well, that each curve of it was made to fit upon your tongue. 

The man—Shinsuke—stares at you. And then his lips tilt into a faint smile, tender like the oncoming dawn; a watercolor sky burgeoning with sunlight, a world coming awake. You think you could build a home in the way he looks at you. 

“There you are,” he says softly. “I’ve been waiting.”

You know.

You’ve known for years that he’s been waiting for you; it’s been scrawled on your skin this whole time. He has always, always been waiting for you.

Your soulmark pulses faintly. For a breath, you think you can see it glow despite the heavy layers you have on.

“Shinsuke,” you say again. It’s a helpless little sound, the edges of it catching in your throat like burrs. You need to say something else. You know you do. You know what you have to tell him, but he’s looking at you so softly that the words keep getting lost. 

Your grip on his phone tightens until the little rice charm is cutting into your skin.

His smile starts to fade. It curls in on itself, wilting at the edges, like the last of the summer flowers.

He’s been looking at only you, you realize. Just you. Your face, most likely, but it feels like something more—as if he’s seeing down to your marrow, as if he’s flayed you open beneath his tender gaze. He’s only been looking at you. Nothing else. 

He’s been looking at you, but you think he’s seeing the rest now. Your careful makeup. Your pristine hair.

Your lavish shiromuku—carefully embroidered with the elegant sweep of cranes’ wings and with delicate petals unfolding into bountiful chrysanthemums—that fits you perfectly, the heavy silk of it as white as driven snow.

You couldn’t find the words for it, caught up in the gentle sun of his joy as it pooled golden around you, but he’s finally seeing what you couldn’t say.

It’s your wedding day.

***

Your soulmark appears when you’re twelve, all without you even noticing. 

Summer is in full bloom in Toyooka; the wet lick of a heatwave has settled oppressive over the countryside. It’s relentless. Even the rice fields seem to feel it, the verdant green ripple of them becoming a honey-slow shiver under the wind’s gentle touch. 

In the heat the cicadas’ call goes lazy; the storks only come out in the earliest parts of morning. They wade carefully through the still waters of the rice paddies, their beaks flashing in the weak sunlight as they needle down into the murk. 

The rental house is tucked carefully between two farms, a lone house amid the rippling rice plants. It’s old but well-maintained, a perfect little hideaway for your mother to finish her study. In the heat, she keeps the shoji doors open wide to let in the dancing, citronella-scented breeze. The first day you wander around the house to weigh the papers down with a mish-mash of items: the fruit bowl, pilfered from the kitchen counter under your father’s nose; encyclopedias long outdated; a pair of petal-flecked garden shears. 

It helps it feel like home.

Abe and her mother have come to Toyooka too; your mothers spend their days bent close together, talking in a language you know by heart but still can’t understand. Caught up in their research, they leave you to your own devices.

Away from all of your other friends and the bustle of the city, you and Abe roam free like a pair of stray cats. You spend the days without chores wandering through town, your arm hooked through hers, both your tongues stained sky blue from the Gari-Gari Kun popsicles from the conbini. The grannies wave at you as you pass by them; the two of you wave back with sticky fingers. 

You flit in and out of the rice paddies, scooping up tadpoles from the murky water. The farmers grow used to your presence quickly; they greet you cheerfully, accepting the onigiri you bring with little nods. 

After you splash through a paddy to coo over them, Watanabe lets you feed his ducks. He pours the feed from his hands into your smaller ones with a grunt. His hands are strong but aged, the dark skin on the back of his hands papery in the sunlight, wrinkled like old parchment. He teaches you both how to sprinkle the feed into the water just right so the ducks go arrowing across the water, little ships without sails. 

The days are long and short in the same breath.  

At night, Abe’s flashlight flickers in her window like a firefly, long after you are both meant to be in bed. You flash your own message back, little secrets wrapped up in ribbons of light, never mentioned after dawn. The two of you are woven together as only childhood friends can be.

And it’s Abe that sees your soulmark first. 

It’s midday and the clouds are rolling in across the clear blue sky hanging heavy and low, a gray promise of afternoon thunder. The two of you trace shapes in the clouds, shaded under a massive camphor tree, bumping into each other’s arms as you go.

There’s a rabbit in your cloud, the puffy edges of it extending into fluffy gray ears that wisp and sway with the growing breeze. You’ve just traced along the little curve of its nose when Abe—who has been burbling away like a spring brook, her chatter weaving a spell around the two of you—goes silent. 

Then she shrieks and grabs your arm.

“When did it come in?” she asks breathlessly. She’s shaking you too hard for you to see what she’s talking about, but there’s only one thing that tone could mean. 

You freeze, your heart pounding in your ears. For a moment, you consider closing your eyes, as if that will keep it from being real. As if that will rewrite your fate. 

You think of all the quotes you’ve scrawled in your notebooks late at night, and hope for all of them and none of them. 

Abe gives you another little shake. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! It’s so early! How long have you had it? Has anyone said it yet? What do you—”

“I don’t know!” you say, shaking her off and scooting backwards, pulling your arm towards your chest. 

She scowls. “How do you not know?”

“I didn’t notice it.”

You hadn’t. Maybe it was the sleepy haze of summer days running together.

Maybe you hadn’t wanted to see it.

Now that you know, it’s easy to see your mark. It’s already settled into your skin, the kanji tucked carefully into the tender flesh of the crook of your elbow. The characters are neat, precise little things, delicate at the edges. It shimmers silvery in the sunlight. A winter moon’s glow inked into your skin.

Abe plants her hands on her hips. “You didn’t notice your soulmark?”

You shake your head. “You know I would tell you!!”

She huffs. “I guess. You really didn’t know?”

You yank on a tuft of grass. “Nope.”

“Idiot,” she says, but it’s fond. She nudges closer to you despite the heat. “Who doesn’t realize their mark was written?”

“Me, I guess.”

“Guess so. Lemme see,” she says, making grabby hands at your arm; you let her yank it close with a sigh. She peers down at your mark with heavy concentration.

“You look like Granny Takada right now.”

She pouts. “Do not!”

“You do,” you tell her. “You’re all squinty.” 

“Do you want me to read it to you or not?”

You take a second too long to answer, the words caught in your throat, tangled on your tongue. Abe glances up. Something passes over her face; it’s too quick to know, a fleeting summer storm. She drops your arm with a sigh.

“The kanji are complicated,” she complains. “Too hard to read. Leave it to you to have a soulmate like that.” 

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” you ask, wrinkling your nose even as you relax, your muscles uncoiling. 

She snorts. “Nothing, nothing,” she coos, smacking your hand away when you swat at her. “Let’s go, it’s gonna rain. We can’t track mud inside again.”

“That was you, not me.”

Abe ignores you, popping up to her feet and rocking back on her heels. She takes off before you can stand her braids streaming behind her like kite ribbons, and you yelp out a protest as you scramble to your feet. 

“Nat-chan!” 

“Keep up!” she shouts, halfway to the rice paddy that edges the little meadow, and you take off after her.

The skies open on the two of you when you’re almost back to the rental, the rain relentless and heavy as only a summer storm can be. You both shriek but the water is warm, and you giggle at the way Abe’s bangs are plastered to her forehead even as you keep running.

You tumble into the genkan just as the first lightning strike splits the sky. You’re practically tripping over each other. Abe knocks into the getabako, jarring a pair of your father’s shoes, their well-worn soles rolling upwards like the barnacled hull of a capsized boat. She grunts with the impact.

“Quiet,” you hiss.

“I’m being quiet,” she hisses back, just as your mother rounds the corner and fixes the two of you with an unimpressed raised brow.

Abe’s mother peeks around the corner too, her lips thinning as she sees the water dripping from the two of you. “You’re soaked,” she says. “And you’re making a mess of the genkan, Natsumi.”

“Sorry,” she mutters.

Her mother sighs. “Weren’t you supposed to be back earlier? Before the rain?”

“We got distracted because her soulmark came in!” Abe says, pointing to you with no remorse. 

You gape at her. 

“What?” she says. “It’s in a pretty obvious spot.” 

“Natsumi,” her mother says, exasperated. “You’re always jumping in feet first.”

Abe grumbles, but goes quiet when her mother eyes her.

“Chieko,” your mother says. “Do you need umbrellas for the walk home?”

“If it’s not an inconvenience.”

“Of course not.”

You and Abe engage in a rapid-fire round of mouthing things to each other as your mothers search for umbrellas, too close to risk actual words. Abe speaks fast, even in exaggerated slow motion, and after you think she says something about snails, you decide it’s too incomprehensible to keep trying. You wave her off with a quick tilt of your head. She scowls but stops, crossing her arms with a soggy squish. 

The scowl disappears from her face as soon as her mother steps up beside her, handing her one of your umbrellas. She traces a finger over the nearest little cat design, petting lightly at its fabric ears. 

“Let’s go before you catch a cold,” Chieko says. “Say goodbye.”

“Bye,” Abe says, her voice stilted.

“Bye,” you parrot. 

“Alright then,” Chieko says after a moment. She looks at you, considering. You bite the inside of your cheek, running the tip of your tongue against the pinched flesh. 

She sighs. “You’ll figure it out,” she says softly.

You should have known that she wouldn’t offer congratulations. The relief spreads over you like a balm, soothing the scrape you hadn’t even known was there. 

You nod. 

“See you tomorrow,” your mother tells her.

She and Abe disappear out the front door and into the downpour; Abe throws you one last look before the door closes behind them. You look away. 

Your mother is quiet for a moment. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“I—I don’t think so.”

She considers you. “Alright,” she says. “I’ll get you a towel and then you need to go change before you get sick.”

“Okay.” 

She disappears down the hallway without another word. 

You look down to your soulmark. At the thin kanji of it, the gleam of them like spiderwebs caught in a moonbeam, an ethereal silver. When you touch it, tracing a fingertip carefully against the crook of your elbow, it just feels like skin. As if it’s always been there. As if it’s always been a part of you. 

Upside down, the kanji are difficult to parse. You run your fingers over them once more, and then your mother is there with a towel. You yank your fingers away as if burned. She doesn’t react, just handing you the towel and corralling you upstairs to dry yourself off. 

Dinner is quiet that night and you go up to bed early, tired from the ups and downs of the day.

You’ve just finished brushing your teeth when the flickering catches your attention. You spit out the last bit of foam and rinse out your mouth before padding over to your window. 

A little light bobs up and down across the way; at moments, you can make out the vague outline of Abe’s face when she brings the flashlight up with a sharp jerk that almost hits her chin. She’s cycling through the attention-getting code you’d made up a few years back. 

You consider pulling your shade down entirely. 

Instead, you pad over to your dresser drawer and pull out your own flashlight. You settle into bed with it heavy on your lap. You pull at the edge of the faded sticker slapped below the switch, tearing a little piece of it off. You flick it on for a second. Just enough to let Abe know you’re there. 

It’s not your normal greeting, and Abe’s window stays dark for a long, long moment. 

Mad at me? she finally flashes, little pulses of starlight in the dark.

You are. Soulmates are different for the two of you. You’ve grown up hearing all of the jargon for your mother’s study, and you know that she has too. You know the low rate of soulmates meeting, and you know the distant look in your father’s eyes as he wraps tender fingers around his blackened mark. 

It’s different, and you thought she knew that. 

Sorry, her flashlight blinks out. I am.

You think of how she complained about the kanji of your mark despite being the most proficient in your classroom. 

Mad at me?

You wonder how you would have told your parents that you’d received your mark when you can barely acknowledge it yourself. 

You raise your flashlight.

No, you send off. Not anymore. 

Good, she immediately sends. 

You talk until your eyelids are drooping and your jaw is cracking with non-stop yawning. It’s easy to say goodnight, knowing you’ll see each other in the morning. You pull down your shade and climb into bed.

You fall asleep with your hand cupped over your soulmark.

***

It takes you three days to finally ask what your mark says. 

Evening is coming to life, the sky darkening into plum, the faintest hint of cotton-candy pink lingering on the horizon. As your father sets the table, you’re unable to resist the quiet call of what fate has scraped into your skin. 

He blinks, trading a look with your mother, but then he smiles softly. 

“After dinner,” he tells you. “Okay?”

You nod.

It’s your mother who reads it to you later, the two of you whispering together on the engawa surrounded by the flicker of the summer fireflies. You curl tight into her side, a rib returned. 

“There you are,” she reads softly, stroking a thumb gently over the kanji. “I’ve been waiting.” 

Her voice is a honeyed drip, sweet and steady, and though she is smiling, you think she sounds sad. She shifts to press a hand tight over her stomach as if it’s the only thing holding her together, as if she’s suddenly too big for her body. You know her mark is there. The kanji has gone sour and black, an eclipsed moon. 

“I don’t know if I want them to wait for me,” you whisper to her. 

She presses a kiss to your hairline. “You don’t have to know, tadpole.”

You bite the inside of your cheek. 

She shifts beside you. “You don’t have to wait for them, you know,” she tells you.

“Really?”

“Really,” she says.

“Do you think I’ll meet them?” you ask, kicking your feet and looking out into the night. A firefly flares bright, and you consider running to catch it. You’ve always been quick enough. The fireflies have always been trusting enough. 

She nudges a knuckle against your cheek. “The chances are low,” she admits, because she has never lied to you about soulmates. “And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“Why?”

She sighs. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

She still has her hand pressed hard against her ribcage. 

You bite your lip and don’t ask anything else. 

The two of you stay curled together under the stars, watching the trucks trundle down the road as the late-working farmers return from the paddies. Eventually, she ushers you inside, and when she thinks you aren’t looking she knots her fingers in your father’s shirt. The fabric winds tight around her fingers, cutting into the softness of her skin. Her shoulders are trembling. Your father cups the back of her head and brushes a kiss to her hairline. 

You go up to your bedroom without a word because even this young, you know there are things you aren’t meant to see. 

Not long after that night your mother and Abe’s mother publish the study. It’s a culmination of years of grueling research on soulmates, of half-written notes on napkins when you go out to restaurants, of simmering arguments between her and Abe’s mother, of death threats and poisonous words. 

It covers the concept of soulmates like kudzu, winding over the romance of it and smothering it beneath statistics and a dissection of societal impact alike. 

It gets a nickname soon after publication, and your mother’s smile is a melon rind curve, bitter at the edges. 

They call it the Heartbreak Study.

***

Summer comes to an end.

You leave Toyooka on a rainy afternoon, the light drizzle sending water droplets racing down the train window. The storks huddle together in the paddies, their wet feathers gleaming like the moon. Abe is warm at your side curled into you, already half-asleep from the underlying hum of the train. It picks up speed and the rolling green of the countryside blurs like a watercolor, smearing across the horizon as you head back to the city.

It feels like you’re leaving more than the countryside behind.

Still, the city is a comfort, the bustle of it a familiar song, and you’d missed the neon lights that dot the streets like little flowers. With the return of school just around the corner it’s nice to settle back into the rhythm of city life, so different from the steady, unyielding heartbeat of Toyooka. 

You unpack your clothes and yourself too, slotting everything back into your city life, trying to fit back into it like a well-worn pair of shoes. 

“Oh,” Yoshikawa says lazily the next day, when you and Abe find her sprawled out on a bench by the conbini, sucking on a popsicle. She peers up at you, her long hair flowing around her shoulders like weeds in the current, softly swaying with each little movement. “You’re back.”

“She got her soulmark!” Abe says, dragging you forward by your wrist to display your mark. 

“Natsu,” you groan, ignoring the way she tugs at your wrist to pull you even more into Yoshikawa’s space. “Really?”

“What, you weren’t going to tell her?”

“Yeah,” Yoshikawa drawls, her dark eyes sly. “Were you not gonna tell me?”

“Shut up, Yocchan,” you say. “You know I was going to tell you.”

“You sure?” she asks, propping herself up on her elbows. “Doesn’t quite sound like it.”

“Yocchan.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop teasing. Can I see?” 

You hesitate for a breath. 

“You don’t gotta,” Yoshikawa says, biting into her popsicle with a loud crunch. Her lips are blue with it, the same color as the mid-morning sky. It drips down her elegant fingers, catches on the small scars littered across them. She licks at them absently, but her gaze is keen.

“It’s fine,” you say. “I’m just…still getting used to it.”

She hums. 

“Great,” Abe says, using her grip on your wrist to tug you forward again. “Look, look, look!”

Yoshikawa pushes herself the rest of the way up slowly, tucking her popsicle between her teeth as she reaches for your arm. Her fingers are sticky against your skin. She’s quiet as she reads your mark, her brow slightly furrowed. 

She lets you go after a minute, and you try not to fidget.

“Romantic,” she says. She lays back down on the bench.

Abe makes a strangled noise. “That’s all?”

Yoshikawa blinks slowly, but there’s a smug curve to her lips. “Is there something else to say?”

Abe stamps her foot. “There’s so much to say! She got her mark! The first of us! The first in our year!”

“Nah, Sasaki got his right before the break.”

“He did?”

“He did?” you echo. Relief blooms in you, rooting in the cracks of you, and you let out a tight breath you didn’t know you were holding. 

“Yeah,” Yoshikawa says. She closes her eyes and raises her face to the sun. It bathes her, turns her golden, an offering at the ending summer’s altar. “Our moms are friends. Heard them talking about it.” 

“Oh,” Abe says, pursing her lips. She glances at you, and you don’t know what she sees in your face, but her eyes go soft. “I guess it’s better that way. It won’t be as big of a deal. It’ll be fine.”

“You think so?” you ask. It comes out smaller than you meant it to. 

She nudges you with her hip. “Yeah,” she says, her voice gentle. There’s a promise in it. “I do.”

Yoshikawa hums her agreement as she bites off the last of her popsicle, ignoring Abe’s wince. She sucks the stick clean and glances at it. “Oh,” she says mildly. “I won.” 

“What?” Abe cries out, practically clambering on top of her to grab the stick. “How do you always win?”

Yoshikawa grunts under her sudden burden, stretching out one long arm to keep Abe from grabbing the stick. “S’not my fault you have bad luck.”

“C’mon, you already had a popsicle today!”

You watch them struggle, Abe doing her best to blanket Yoshikawa’s lanky frame with her tiny one. The laughter bubbles out of you, spills from you like an overflowing urn, loud and unrestrained. 

They turn to you in unison, brows raised. 

“Let’s go to the park,” you say, laughter still sweet on your tongue. “Don’t want to waste the day.” 

They eye you for a moment. They look at each other and shrug. 

“Conbini first,” Abe says. “I want something.” 

“You can’t have my popsicle,” Yoshikawa says.

“I don’t want your stupid free popsicle!”

“You were just trying to grab it!”

“Well I don’t want it anymore! I want mochi instead!”

This time you swallow down your laugh, let it spread warm through you like bottled sunshine. You follow the bickering pair into the conbini. They wait for you at the door, and you link pinkies with them both so they can drag you down the snack aisle.

For the first time since getting your mark, it feels like everything is going to be okay.

***

School starts up again.

It’s still warm, the last dregs of summer lingering in the air as you walk languidly to school with your friends. Abe flits ahead, her dark hair shimmering under the morning sun, and you think of a little darting fish on a reef, a quicksilver flash of scales. She greets other classmates easily. They always have a smile for her, and she falls into step beside them for a moment, chattering away. 

But in the end she always turns around and waits for you and Yoshikawa.

She’s off in the distance when Yoshikawa glances down at the silver peeking out of the crook of your elbow, exposed by the summer uniform’s short sleeves. 

“No wrap?” she asks. 

“No wrap,” you say.

You’d thought about it, but wearing a wrap screams that you’ve gotten your mark. With yours tucked tender into the crook of your elbow, you might be able to get away with it. At least you hope so. You know how many eyes will be on you when people realize, and you shift on the balls of your feet, pressing closer to Yoshikawa.

She hums. “Alright.”

You know that tone.

“Do not cause any problems,” you warn her.

She blinks slowly, like a smug cat with a patch of sunshine all to itself. “I would never. Do you want some toast?”

“Do I what—”

She pulls a handkerchief filled with toast out from her bag, little oily spots of butter bleeding through the hand-embroidered cloth. “Toast,” she says, holding it out.

“Don’t try to distract me,” you say irritably, but when she nudges the toast in your direction you slip a piece free of the handkerchief. You’ve eaten breakfast but no one makes bread like Yoshikawa’s mother, a hobby she’d picked up in her year abroad as a teen. Any of her loaves crackle perfectly under the bread knife, each slice thick and hearty, woven through with herbs and spices. 

“I would never.”

“Liar,” you mutter, sinking your teeth into the toast.

“So mean,” she says, but she’s smiling.

“Hurry up!” Abe shouts back to you both, her hands cupped over her mouth to unnecessarily amplify herself. 

Yoshikawa ignores her, sauntering along as your fellow students pour past you both. She moves like a river current, languid and flowing, and immoveable from her path. 

“You’re the worst,” Abe tells her a few minutes later, when you’ve finally caught up to her. 

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t ignore me, Yocchan!” 

“I’m not,” Yoshikawa says, holding out the toast again. She always brings enough for all three of you. “You just say it so much that it’s lost all meaning.” 

Abe grumbles, but she snags a piece of toast. It crunches beneath her teeth, a crackling symphony. “This is bribery, you know,” she says through her mouthful, scrunching up her nose. 

Yoshikawa shrugs. 

“C’mon,” you say, poking at them both. “We’re gonna be late.”

Abe links arms with you. Your mark flashes bright with the movement, glimmering like snow in the moonlight, all prismatic ice. 

She hums, shifting her arm just enough that your elbows are interlocked, hiding your mark as she tugs you towards the school gates. “Let’s go then,” she says. 

Yoshikawa falls into step on your other side. She leans over and softly bonks her head against yours, her long hair a veil for you both. You press together for a breath, then she pulls back and links her arm through your other arm as you enter the school grounds.

You make it two whole periods before someone notices. 

It’s Hasegawa, of course, her deep brown eyes going wide as you reach into your bag for your textbook. She says something to her seatmate, and Honda’s eyes snap to you.

You keep arranging your supplies. You set your pencil down next to your notebook and line them up as precisely as you can, nudging it back and forth until it’s perfectly aligned as they whisper to each other. They keep glancing at you until Yoshikawa leans back in her seat and flashes them a razor-edged smile. Honda squeaks, and they both go quiet after that.

But there’s no escaping it. You can feel eyes on you all day, and murmurs follow you everywhere. You barely eat at lunch, pushing the pieces of your bento around as Abe and Yoshikawa crowd you on either side. 

You almost make it to the end of the school day, but then Ueda and Nakajima stop you in the hallway. You bow to your seniors as they look you up and down. 

“We heard you got your soulmark,” Nakajima says, swaying in place just slightly, like kelp caught in a current. “Is it true?”

“Yes,” you say, trying not to fidget with your sleeve.

“When?” Ueda asks, frowning.

“Over the break.”

“Early to be getting your mark,” she muses. She doesn’t have hers yet, you think. Only a handful of people in her year do. 

“They say the earlier the mark manifests, the stronger the soul bond,” Nakajima says. 

It’s a common belief, one of the oldest wives tales there is, but you’ve spent too long listening to your mother. You know better. Still, your stomach twists.

“What does yours say?” Ueda asks.

You bite your tongue; the pain flashes through you like lightning, bright and sharp and bitter. The bitterness lingers, fills your mouth until you have to swallow it down. It stings the whole way. 

Ueda waits.

When you tell her, it feels like each word is being torn from you, as if they’d rooted into your very flesh. 

(You suppose they have.) 

For a breath, Ueda’s face twists. You think of the first hint of rot in ripe fruit, when the scent goes too sweet, a promise of decay. It isn’t the first time you’ve seen jealousy over a mark, but it’s odd to have it directed at you. 

I didn’t ask for this, you want to tell her. I don’t know if I even want this.

“Oh, how lovely,” Nakajima murmurs, moon-eyed. “You’re lucky to have such a devoted soulmate.”

You smile, but you think it’s a poor imitation of one, soured at the edges as it is. “Yeah,” you say, because she’s looking at you expectantly. “I am.”

“Well, congratulations. Right, Machi?”

“Yeah,” Ueda says, flashing you a tight smile. “Congratulations.” 

“Thank you,” you say, the words ash on your tongue. 

Nakajima tilts her head, bird-like, but Yoshikawa comes to your rescue, calling out your name from down the hall. You bid your seniors a quiet goodbye before hurrying to her.

She slings an arm around your shoulders, squeezing lightly. 

“Okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “I’m fine.”

She hums her disbelief but leaves you be.

With her by your side, smiling pleasantly and radiating danger, the day passes without anyone else approaching you. Abe joins you again, looking proud of herself in a way that means she caused a problem, and you wonder what you did to deserve both of them. 

They come home with you when school ends, waving to your parents as you head up to your room. You collapse face-down on your bed and Yoshikawa laughs, low and deep and a little bit sad. 

She and Abe curl up around you like cats. They talk about everything and nothing, filling up your room with their presence until you start to go lax against them. They shuffle closer as you do and they’re warm against you, like sunbaked stone. You sink into that warmth and breathe out deeply.

The next few weeks will be filled with questions, with murmurs behind your back, with everything that comes with getting your mark so early. You know that, but there’s one other thing that you know, too.

With them, you know you’ll make it through. 

***

The school year blurs past in a watercolor of seasons. Fall gives way to winter, curling up under the biting cold; spring chases away winter in a riot of color, the sakura buds unfurling as your upperclassmen graduate, each bloom inset into the branches like a little jewel. As summer beckons, the days warming as the promise of rain hangs heavy in the humid air, Kimura gets her mark.

She’s only the third person in your year to get hers and she’s coy about it, wrapping it in a ribbon, the burgundy silk luscious against her skin. It’s as eye-catching as she meant it to be. 

It’s elegant in its own way, though the ribbon wilts slightly as the day goes on, mostly from the way she keeps touching it. She strokes along the ribbon as she talks with her friends. You’re not sure she realizes it.

A few people glance your way, their eyes flickering to your elbow, but their attention is as fleeting as the first snow. Their gazes return to Kimura, to the bruised burgundy of her ribbon.

Something loosens in you, unravels from where it’s been knit tight around your ribs. 

Honda gets hers next, and then Watanabe gets his. 

Slowly, mark after mark comes into being, words unfurling across skin. As more of your classmates receive their marks, yours fades into the background. It becomes common and you sink into that commonality, having long waited for the spotlight on you to cease.

Your mark fades into the background, like a star just after dawn—known only to those who know where to look. You try not to think of it. Sometimes you even succeed.

In your second year of high school, there’s Takao.

He’s a quiet boy. Stoic, even, his face almost stony as he introduces himself as the new transfer student. But he has a dandelion tuft smile, downy soft and fleeting, carried off by the wind not long after it blooms across his lips. 

You like it, his smile. 

You watch Kimura—your class rep, a position she’s held since middle school—get to her feet. Takao is setting up his desk when she approaches, methodically laying out his supplies. He keeps them in neat rows and you can’t help but smile when you see that his eraser is a battered little Keroppi, its round eyes almost flattened into a straight line on one side.

The class’s chatter softens, a few people glancing towards Kimura and Takao. You can’t see her face, but her fingers are trembling, just a bit. He looks unbothered. There’s not a trace of nerves in him, until you realize that the tips of his ears have gone faintly pink.

Kimura’s voice doesn’t carry when she greets him so you don’t hear what she says, but you see the tension bleed from her after Takao speaks. 

Not soulmates, then.

She relaxes, and from the way her hands are moving she’s starting to outline the classroom expectations. You shift in your seat, starting to turn away, when a flash of movement from Takao catches your eye.

He looks at you from beneath the fan of his eyelashes from across the classroom. He has a small spray of fading freckles, you realize, speckled over the bridge of his nose like a cluster of stars. He gives you that smile again. It takes a moment to realize you’re staring, and you look away, your cheeks hot.  

“You’ve got a crush,” Abe sing-songs at lunch a few days later, jabbing her chopsticks into your bento and stealing a piece of pickled daikon. 

“I don’t,” you say, moving your bento away as she tries to steal another piece. 

Yoshikawa snorts. She’s sprawled out on the grass next to you and Abe, her long skirt caught up around her calves. There’s grass caught in her black hair, the verdant blades swaying as she moves, as if floating in the whirling eddies of the darkened sea.  

“If you’re gonna lie,” she says, turning over onto her stomach, “at least do it well.” 

“I’m not lying!”

“Liar.”

“Such a liar,” Abe agrees. “You stare at him all the time.”

“No I don’t!”

Abe’s grin goes sly. “I didn’t say who,” she tells you. 

“I—it doesn’t matter who, I don’t stare at anyone!”

Yoshikawa raises an eyebrow. “So you don’t stare at Takao.” 

You scowl down at the ground, ripping up a small chunk of grass. You rub the blades between your fingers until they’re a fine pulp, and the scent of a freshly mowed lawn permeates the air.

“See?” Abe says. “Told you.”

“Are you going to talk to him?” Yoshikawa asks, peering up at you. She’s sly-eyed, her gaze keen despite the way she yawns. 

“Not yet,” you say. It takes you a moment to realize that you’re cupping a hand over your mark, rubbing your thumb over the thin skin just above it.

Yoshikawa smiles, warm and soft and knowing, and doesn’t say anything else. Instead she moves closer to you, curling around you like a crescent moon, her head padded on her discarded blazer. You settle into the cradle of her.

Abe is grinning wildly. “I knew that you had a crush,” she says, popping another bite of your rice into her mouth. 

“Oh, like we haven’t seen the way you moon over Takeda!” you say.

She shrugs. “She’s cute.” 

You huff and reach over to steal some of her tamagoyaki. She yelps, scrambling to pull her bento away as you snatch at the last piece. “Mean!” she says, watching as you eat it, the fluffy egg practically melting on your tongue. “I want the rest of your daikon!”

“Get your own!”

She reaches for your bento and you swat at her. The two of you bicker for the rest of lunch, only ceasing when you return to the classroom and take your seats.

Out of the corner of your eye, there’s a flicker of movement. When you glance over, Takao is already watching you. There’s a smile tucked sweet into the corner of his mouth, a sliver of a thing. 

It’s you who looks away first.

You’ll talk to him eventually, you think, cupping a hand over your soulmark once again. 

Just not yet.

***

Not yet lasts longer than you thought.

You and Takao trade glances across the classroom for one week, then another, and then another still. Each look is a fleeting thing, like a shooting star streaking across the sky. 

But you don’t speak to each other. 

You learn the sound of his voice through others when he speaks to your classmates and teachers. It’s quiet, steady, with a warm rasp to it that makes you think of billowing smoke. He blushes to the tips of his ears when it cracks. It’s cute in a way that makes you ache.  

You learn the sound of him, but never for yourself.

Still, you gravitate towards each other. He offers you a tangerine one morning, his smile small, soft, and earnest. When you nod he uses his fingernail to split open the peel, unfurling it in a smooth motion. The peel curls bright around his hand. He separates out a segment and gives it to you, his fingertips damp with sticky juice. They leave shy little imprints across your palm. 

The fruit bursts across your tongue like sunshine, golden and warm. Takao is watching you with hopeful eyes. You grin, and hold your hand out for another.

He sits down next to you to share it. The classroom is full of chatter, but the two of you are quiet, wrapped up in your own world. Suddenly, it’s not so much that you’re scared of speaking, but that maybe you don’t quite need it. Not yet.

It would be nice, you suppose, but as time passes, you and Takao find ways to fit together without speaking. Instead, you learn the tilt of his mouth and the crinkle of his nose and the way his fingers run through his hair. 

It works. It’s not quite enough, but it works.

And so not yet lasts just a little bit longer, the two of you steering away from the cliff’s edge looming in the distance. 

Another month goes by. 

You spend hours with Takao, the sight of you together a common thing to the point where your classmates ask you where he is when they’re looking for him. You can usually tell them. You’re incredibly aware of each other, caught in each other’s gravitational pull. 

Sometimes it feels like you’re destined to only orbit each other, to never truly touch. 

But sometimes you almost speak.

It’s a golden afternoon, the wind rustling through the leaves like a lullaby, filling the space between you both. You’re tucked together on one of the benches in the school’s yard watching the flow of students as they head to their clubs. 

Takao is sunstruck, haloed in gold, and it makes his dark eyes even deeper, an obsidian sheen. You’ve seen it before, but there’s still something about it that makes your stomach flip. 

He shakes his head, trying to get his hair out of his eyes. It doesn’t work, and he does it again. You think of a wet dog and try to stifle your laugh. 

When he does it for a third time, you reach out and brush your fingers through his hair, sweeping it back from his face. He turns into the touch, just slightly.

Someone shrieks out a laugh, and you look up to see one of the girls in the other classes batting lightly at her boyfriend. He murmurs something to her, and her smile grows wider. 

Your stomach twists, coiling tight as you watch them banter with each other. The gaps between your ribs seem to grow, until the empty space is what you’re made of. 

You want, you want, you want. 

You wonder if you’ll ever have.

Takao senses your change in mood but you say nothing, and the two of you separate not long after. 

Your father is watering the plants when you come home. They fill the windows of your home, the sun streaming through the verdant leaves, leaving emerald patches of light on the floor, nature’s stained glass. 

He’s quietly humming to himself, each note off-key, but he stops as soon as he sees you. He eyes you for a moment. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” you say.

“You were better at lying when you were little,” he tells you.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now what’s wrong?”

You tell him. It spills out of you like an oil slick, coating everything it touches. You tell him about Takao, about the silence, about it all. You hadn’t realized how much the quiet was eating away at your bones. 

“So what is it, exactly, that you’re worrying about?” your father asks when you’ve finished. It’s a sharp question, razor-edged, but his eyes are soft.

“What if he’s not my soulmate?” you ask him.

He blinks. “Does that change how you feel about him?”

You take a moment to consider. You think of Takao’s smile, and the way his fingers linger against the palm of your hand when he hands you the erasers to clap; the way he lets you take pieces of his bento, all without a word. 

“No,” you say. “I don’t think so.”

“There you go, then.”

“But if he’s not my soulmate—”

“You know the statistics as well as I do,” he says.  “If Takao isn’t your soulmate, that doesn’t mean you can’t be with him.”

“They’re waiting,” you whisper.

“That doesn’t mean you have to,” he says gently. “You’re allowed to make your own choice.” 

You’re not sure that you are.

“What if he is my soulmate?”

Your father puts down the watering can. You see a flash of his soulmark. It’s blackened, a charred smudge against his skin, and when you glance up at his face, there’s something old in his expression. For a breath, you don’t know him at all.

It’s gone as soon as it came, like a shadow beneath the summer sun. He smiles at you. “Then your mom and I will have to meet him, won’t we?”

You balk. 

He laughs, a sound that shimmers in the air. “I’m joking, tadpole,” he says. “And if he is—you’ll figure it out. There’s no point in guessing before you even know.” 

You fidget with your sleeve, rubbing your thumb over the fraying hem of it. 

There are worse things than losing something you never had, you think.

“Okay,” you say. “Okay.”

But things are easier said than done.

It’s not easy, not with Takao. It’s hard to find the words when you’ve spent so much time living in the space between them. 

You find yourself on the rooftop with him during lunch. It’s unseasonably warm, thick puffy clouds sitting high in a robin’s egg blue sky, and you’re sitting side-by-side, close enough to touch. Close enough, but not quite.

Takao hands you some anpan; you give him one of your onigiri, peeling the packaging open for him. He nudges against you, a silent thank you, and something in you breaks. 

“This is stupid,” you blurt out, loud enough that a few heads turn your way.

You clap your hand over your mouth immediately. 

He blinks, staring at you with his lips parted, and your cheeks start to heat. And then he laughs, the sound like woodfire smoke, billowing out of him in low, slow tones. It sweeps over you, settles on your skin, and though your cheeks heat more the sight of him sparks something in you. 

He laughs freely and warmly, his eyes crinkling at the edges. It doesn’t stop; if anything, it flows more strongly, like a river to the ocean. You find yourself swept up in it, laughter bubbling up inside you. 

When it spills out of you and joins his, it sounds like a song. 

“I cannot believe that’s what you said,” he says, and oh, you’ve ached to hear his voice when it was meant for you. You drink it in, swallow it down, something for you alone. “Of all the things.”

He laughs again, short and sharp with delight, but your smile is wilting, going brittle at the edges.

You finally have Takao, only to lose him a moment later.

You’re not soulmates. 

***

It changes things. 

You don’t mean for it to happen, but it does. Suddenly, the language between the two of you is different. Too used to speaking without words, neither of you are prepared for actual speech. You stumble over conversation, the words caught in your mouths like pebbles in a wave, spinning over and over until they’re worn down to nothing. 

“You’ll figure it out,” Abe says, lounging upside down on your bed, tapping away at her controller, her brow furrowed as she smashes at the buttons. “You just gotta adjust, that’s all.” 

You sigh. It’s not something you can explain, really. How one space was filled and another emptied. It leaves something in you aching. 

Yoshikawa hums from where she’s sprawled on your floor, barely paying attention to the tv as she hits combo after combo, much to Abe’s annoyance. “Soulmate stuff is weird,” she says. “But it’s up to you.”

“It’s up to him, too,” you remind her. “Not everyone wants to date someone who isn’t their soulmate.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Abe says. “He likes you. It’s kinda gross how much.”

Your cheeks heat. “Shut up.”

She sticks her tongue out at you. “Make me.” 

You throw a pillow at her face, relishing her little yelp as she tries to scramble out of the way and almost falls off your bed. 

“Brat,” she says, tossing the pillow back. “He does, though. Like you.”

“I know,” you say, something vast filling you.

“Is this about the waiting thing?” Yoshikawa asks, putting down her controller and turning to face you. She hooks her chin over your knee, looking up at you with knowing eyes. 

You bite at your bottom lip. 

You know the rates better than anyone; you’ve spent your whole childhood hearing a language all its own. Percentages, probabilities, and all manners of complicated academic jargon, all focused on stripping away the whimsy of soulmates. 

Your mother has only ever wanted to understand. But in that coveting, that hunger, she pressed understanding upon you as well, until you’re caught up in yourself, a tangled skein, so knotted that the beginning can barely be found. 

“What if I do meet them?” you ask. “And they really have been waiting?”

Yoshikawa hums; it reverberates through you. “Dunno,” she says. “But what if you don’t meet them?”

You glare. “Thanks, that’s helpful.” 

“Yeah, Yocchan,” Abe pipes up. “Super helpful.”

Yoshikawa tosses another pillow at her. “I don’t see you offering anything!”

“I already said it’ll be fine!” 

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did!” 

You laugh, the sound light but loud. Your friends pause, looking incredibly pleased with themselves. 

“Oh good,” Abe says. “You’re back.” 

“What do you mean?” you ask.

“Nothing,” she says, but you think there’s a bit of sadness to her, in the waning moon of her smile. “Are you gonna play with us now?” 

She shoves a controller at you and you take it with a huff. “Get ready to lose,” you tell her.

“What else is new?” Yoshikawa asks, moving away from you to grab her own controller again.

“Shut up, Yocchan,” Abe says, scowling. “You’re the worst.”

“Love you too.” 

You ignore them both to pick your character, but you can’t help the smile that plays across your lips as they continue to argue with each other. Abe curls herself around you, sticking her tongue out at Yoshikawa. You shift to give her room and your mark catches the light, reflects it back like morning dew. 

For a moment you stare down at the words that have already changed your life so much. Sometimes you wonder how much more they can take from you.

“It’s my choice,” you say. You freeze, not having meant to say it out loud, but Yoshikawa just hums, settling warm on your other side

“Yeah,” she says with a little hum. “It is.” 

But it isn’t just your choice.

You can’t quite understand Takao’s smile anymore. The nuances are lost in the space between the two of you, a language half-forgotten. The structure is there, but you’ve lost some of the words. 

You can’t quite understand his choice, either.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you, a scant few weeks after you realize you aren’t soulmates. The tips of his ears are pink, the color of the early dawn, and his eyes are glassy. “It’s just that—”

“We’re not soulmates,” you finish for him. Your heart is thrumming behind your ribs, a hummingbird battering against its cage. “Right?”

He winces. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t think it would matter.”

Maybe you should have known that it would.

He winces again; his hands tighten on the strap of his school bag. He stares at you, looking helpless, and you hate that you want to cradle his face in your hands. That you want to make it better for him. 

“It—”

He cuts himself off. His lip trembles, wobbling like a spinning top, and it comes to you all at once. It’s written in the space between you, in a language you’ve both been speaking for months, one that’s all your own.

Takao’s lying.

“Tell me the truth,” you demand, clenching your fists. 

He looks away. “We’re not soulmates,” he says. “That’s all there is to it.”

“Liar.”

“Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he says. “Please.”

“Then tell me the truth.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Fine,” you say. “Fine.” 

When you walk away, he doesn’t come after you. 

***

You hide yourself away among the hydrangea bushes that line the library, settling yourself in a sea of powder-blue petals. You curl up, pulling your knees up against your chest, and cry quietly until your uniform skirt is damp. 

“Well, that’s not good,” Abe says.

You glance up to see her and Yoshikawa leaning over the hydrangea bushes, looking down at you with tender expressions. You immediately cry harder, starting to sob aloud.

“Oh shit,” Abe says, pushing through the puffball clusters of flowers and dropping to her knees beside you. “Don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s okay.” 

“Takao?” Yoshikawa asks.

You nod. 

She smiles, sharp and mean. “Abe, stay with her. I’ll be back.”

You shoot to your feet, grabbing her by her uniform sleeve before she can take off. “No!” you yelp. “No, Asako, don’t do anything!”

“Why not? He made you cry.” 

“He just—it’s okay.”

“It’s not.” 

“He doesn’t want to be with someone who isn’t his soulmate,” you say softly. “That’s…he’s allowed to make that choice.”

She clicks her tongue. “He didn’t strike me as the type.”

“Me either,” you mumble. “I think he’s lying.”

“Why would he lie?” Abe asks, tilting her head.

“Don’t know,” you say. “But it just…it just seemed like he was. Please leave him alone.”

You don’t know how to explain it. You’re not sure you can. It’s a strange little language, the language that forms between two people who haven’t spoken to each other, and you’re not sure anyone who hasn’t created that language between themselves and another could even begin to understand the alphabet of it. 

Yoshikawa hums; her sly eyes are narrowed, the deep brown of them darkened to almost black. “Fine. But if he makes you cry again, all bets are off.”

“Yeah,” Abe says, nudging you up to your feet. “And we know where you hide, so no point in trying to keep it from us!”

Your laugh is watery, but it’s light as it leaves your lips. 

Abe loops her arm through yours. “Let’s go,” she says. “It’s lunchtime and Yoshikawa has a good bento today.”

“And it’s not for you,” Yoshikawa says lazily, stuffing her hands in her pocket as the three of you start to walk. “So don’t even try it.” 

You laugh again and they bicker all the way to the classroom. You’re in the middle of grabbing your own bento when you feel eyes on you and when you look up, Takao startles, looking away quickly. You bite your lip as the tips of his ears go pink once more. 

He glances at you again, and his eyes linger on your face. When his lips curl down into a small frown, you realize he knows you’ve been crying. He looks away as the twist of his lips goes pained. 

Yoshikawa steps in front of you, blocking your view of him. “C’mon,” she says softly, chivving you towards her desk where Abe is already sitting. “Let’s go.”

You follow her after one last glance in Takao’s direction. 

It develops into a routine over the next few weeks. You get used to the feeling of eyes on you all over again. Takao’s gaze feels silken against your skin, and though you shouldn’t, you bask in it. Maybe you’re too used to it; it reminds you of the beginning, when all you had was fleeting looks and quiet gazes. 

But now he looks away every time you look up, though his ears always give him away. 

Still, there’s a comfort to it. It doesn’t go away, even as you simply circle around each other, caught in each other’s orbit once more. This time, at least, you know that you’ll stay this way. 

Except two months after you go your separate ways, you’re assigned to work on a project together.

Your hurt has waned; it’s a healing bruise, now, only flaring to life when you press on it. The hopeful look on Takao’s face barely even causes an ache. You stay in your seat, but he gets to his feet and comes to you as the teacher leaves.

“Hi,” Takao says, fidgeting with the strap of his school bag. “I’m—if you want to switch partners to someone else, I understand.”

“Do you want to switch partners?” you ask.

“Not really,” he blurts out, and this time, his blush is bright, the apples of his cheeks dusted in heated red. “I mean, no. I don’t.”

“Okay,” you say slowly. It feels nice, somehow, looking at him, at his small, timid smile and the way the sun catches golden on his skin. “I guess I’m fine with it.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I’m—I’m glad.”

“Let’s talk after clubs,” you say. “We can figure out our topic then.” 

He nods. He stands there for a moment; it’s only when you raise an eyebrow that he jolts and heads back to his desk. When you look over, he’s got his hands pressed against his face. You think you see him mutter “idiot” to himself.

The smile tugs on your lips without you even realizing it. 

***

“I miss you,” Takao says, fifteen minutes into your third project session. “I miss you so much.” 

You go stiff. 

The project has gone well so far. You’ve found yourself falling into easy communication with Takao, but you’ve kept it strictly to the project, rarely going into your lives outside of school. Still, it’s easy in a way it hasn’t been in a while. You find yourself smiling, and sometimes he even makes you laugh. 

“Okay,” you say, sounding wooden even to yourself. “I—I don’t know what you want me to say to that.” 

He winces. “You don’t have to say anything,” he says.

You mean to say okay, but what you say instead is—

“I miss you too.”

Takao blinks. And then a smile is spreading across his lips, slow like the dawn and just as warm. “Really?” he asks.

Your cheeks heat, but you nod. 

“Do you think we can be friends?” he asks, almost shy.

You bite your lip. “I think…I think we can try.” 

“I’d like that,” he says softly. “I’d really like that.”

You smile at him, slow and sure. “Me too.”

He smiles back, and the two of you turn back to your project.

You find that it takes time to learn how to be friends with Takao. It’s not like Abe and Yoshikawa with the fluid ease of childhood friends, forged by years and years at each other’s sides, memory after memory built into a firm foundation. Nor is it like your other friends.

Takao seems to inhabit a space all his own. Maybe he always will. It seems right that he would; it doesn’t surprise you that he carved himself a place in your world without even trying. 

It takes time. Eventually, even Abe and Yoshikawa warm up to him, until the four of you are spending summer nights together, popsicles melting down your fingers in the heat. You laugh through sticky lips and sit side-by-side despite the heat.

It feels good to have him back in your life, and high school goes by in a whirlwind of seasons, the years melting together until you graduate. He’s by your side when you do ,along with Yoshikawa and Abe, the four of you taking pictures on the school lawn surrounded by your peers. 

The four of you spend as much time as you can together before you head off to college, just a few scant weeks after graduating. 

It’s easy with Yoshikawa and Abe; the three of you are woven together, a tapestry of home. College is just another stitch, with the three of you attending the same one. You find a cute apartment just off campus, in a slightly worn building with wisteria dripping down the sides like honey. Yoshikawa and Abe like to hang laundry from the balcony; they says it comes back with a floral scent. The dishwasher is broken more often than not, the rooms are tiny, and you love it. So do they, and the three of you build a home together.

With Takao, it’s harder. You drift away from each other in college, pressed in on all sides by classes, studying, and local friends. It feels hard to find the time to breathe, let alone text Takao anything other than a fleeting check-in or a picture of something that reminded you of him.

Unlike before, it feels natural. It isn’t without its edges but they’re dulled, so that they press against your skin instead of cut. He simply fades from your everyday life until the ding of his text message is a surprise instead of a given. 

When he walks back into your life in your third year of college, it’s like getting hit by a lightning bolt.

***

The izakaya is tucked away at the edge of the city, sandwiched between two small apartment buildings that have ivy spidering up the side of them. You watch as a sheet billows on a clothesline, rippling like water, the clothespins holding firm despite the strong breeze. 

The fat tabby lazing on the edge of the izakaya steps doesn’t even lift its head to look at you. It’s sheltered under a verdant fern frond, part of the little forest of plants clustered around the entrance. Some of the plants are spilling out of their pots, sprawling out in great clusters of leaves, the tiny flowers dotted in them barely visible in the light of the nearby vending machine. 

You crouch down by the cat unable to resist, and it blinks itself awake slowly, turning slate gray eyes your way. It sniffs at your knuckles when you reach out to it. It rubs its cheek against your hand once, and then gets to its feet, stretching mightily as your friends laugh from just inside the entrance. You try to pet it again but it pointedly turns away and curls up again under the frond, further in than before, a little forest deity hidden amid lush scenery. 

You stare at it for a moment longer, looking at how its cheeks squish up against its paws. 

“Pouting doesn’t affect Momo,” someone behind you says.

You look up, and then go still.

“Hi,” Takao says, warm like the early morning sun. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” you say, as if he hasn’t knocked the breath from you. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been good. You?”

“Are we really going to do this?” you ask, standing up from your awkward crouch. 

He smiles, and you think he might be swallowing down a laugh. “Do what?”

You scowl at him. “You know what,” you say. “The small talk.”

“It’s polite.”

“Is that your main concern? Politeness?”

This time, he does laugh, low and sweet. “No,” he says, his eyes glittering. “You are.”

Your cheeks heat. “You can’t just say that.”

“Just did,” he says. “Are—are you here by yourself?”

“With friends.”

“Do you think I could steal you away for a drink?”

“Yeah,” you say softly. “I think you can.” 

He smiles at you. “Good.”

He ushers you into the izakaya. It’s warm inside despite the open windows, and the scent of fried food lingers in the air. People’s chatter fills the room up to the rafters, little laughs peppered in like champagne sounds, little pops of joy. There’s another cat curled up on a barstool tucked away in a corner, a ball of white fluff that makes you think of dandelions. 

Yoshikawa sees you first; when she sees Takao behind you, she raises a single elegant brow before turning back to your group of friends. She says something with a lazy roll of her shoulders, and suddenly, all of your friends are trying very hard to not look at the entrance. 

“Oh my god,” you mutter.

Takao laughs, the huff of air stirring against your nape. “They’re pretty obvious,” he says. “Should we go say hi?” 

“Later,” you say.

He follows you to the bar. He’s close, and under the scent of fried food you can make out the faintest hint of his woodsy cologne. 

You sit side by side, close enough to feel each other’s warmth but without touching. The bartender brings you your beers, and you look to Takao as he taps the neck of his bottle against yours. 

“It’s so good to see you,” he breathes, his dark eyes soft.

“Yeah,” you say. “It is.” 

One drink turns into two until you’re both sliding closer to each other in your seat, pressing into each other’s sides. You barely keep yourself from curling into him. He leans in close when you’re speaking, so that his voice is rumbling low in your ear. 

You share some takoyaki and then one of the biggest okonomiyaki you’ve ever seen, the pancake stuffed to the brim with filling and heavily topped. When the food arrives, so does the white cat, meowing quietly at your feet as it winds its way around the rungs of your barstool. Takao holds you steady when you lean down to pet it, his hand firm on your lower back. 

By your third beer, Yoshikawa and the rest of your friend group leaves. She gives you a little wave on her way out the door. 

“Sorry,” Takao says. “I didn’t mean to take up your whole night.” 

“It’s okay,” you say. “It’s been…really nice.”

“Just nice?”

“Great,” you admit. “It’s been great.”

He smiles, and it’s that same dandelion fluff smile you remember, sweet and fleeting. 

“Good,” he says, taking a sip from his beer. You watch the way his forearm flexes. “Listen, do you want to meet up again?”

“Yeah, I would.”

His eyes crinkle. “Great,” he says.

You bite down on your smile. 

The two of you finish your beers between lazy chatter. It’s comfortable, as if you never fell out of touch. 

When you leave, Takao waits as you pet the white cat once more, delicately bumping your knuckles against its cheek as it rumbles out a purr. It meows pitifully when you stop, opening its blue, blue eyes with a disgruntled look on its face, and you laugh to yourself, kneeling to give it a few more pets. 

You look for the tabby as you exit the izakaya but it’s gone, likely curled up amid some of the planters further back. You and Takao both stop at the sidewalk, carefully making sure you’re out of the way of any pedestrians, and for a moment, you just look at each other.

“See you soon?” Takao asks.

“Yeah,” you say. “See you soon.” 

“Good,” he breathes, with his eyes so soft that it makes your cheeks warm. 

You say goodbye, and each of you heads home. When you glance back Takao is already looking back at you from the street corner. You give him a little wave, and he jolts before hurrying off.

You smile your whole way home.

***

“It’s so hot,” you complain, flopping down next to Takao on the park bench. “Can we go to the conbini?”

“Popsicles?” he asks.

“No, I want onigiri.”

He raises a brow. “How does that help with the heat?”

“It doesn’t,” you tell him. “The aircon does.”

He laughs. “Oh, of course.” 

You head to the closest conbini, practically swimming through the humid summer air. The air is so thick that you could cut it; there’s rain on the horizon, promised in the encroaching gray-blue clouds hanging low in the sky. 

Inside it’s blessedly cool, the aircon hard at work. The two of you scour the aisles, picking out varying snacks and pointing out new flavors to each other—you try to make him buy a cream stew Gari Gari Kun popsicle, but he refuses—before you head to the cashier.

You settle in at one of the tables, opening your drink as Takao unwraps one of your onigiri, handing it to you before he busies himself with his own food. He gives you a little swat when you reach out for his snacks, making you retract your hand with a laugh. As you pull back, you wonder when the two of you fell back into rhythm.

It’s close to the one you had in high school, but not the same. There’s something new twining through the rhythm, a swirl of notes that resonates through you. It’s an easy flow, a soft ebb and tide, like the calmest of seas. 

“Hey,” Takao says gently. 

“Hmm?”

“Where did you go, just then?” 

You blink and take a sip of your peach tea. It lingers sweet on your tongue as you meet his stoic gaze. His mouth tilts, just slightly, something tucked up secret in the corner of his soft lips. 

For a moment, you just look at him. He meets your gaze easily; he lets you look your fill, as patient as ever.

“Sorry,” you say. “Nowhere important.” 

“Okay.”

You shake your head. “You’re so—” you break off.

“I’m so?”

You bite at your lip. “You,” you say. “You’re so you.”

His smile is small, but it grows, as steady and sure as the sun’s rise.

“I hope so,” he says, almost flippant, but there’s something soft in his gaze; it brushes over you like silk.

“Shut up,” you tell him.

He just laughs, quiet and low.

The two of you chat as you eat, talking about Yoshikawa’s upcoming art show at a trendy new gallery. You’ve been waiting patiently ever since the curator first picked her up as a featured artist. It’ll be nice to go with Takao, for the four of you to be side-by-side again, something that’s becoming as constant as it was in your high school days. 

When you’re finished Takao takes all the wrappers and folds them up neatly, creasing them until they’re practically origami. You bite down on your smile.

The summer air rolls over you as you step back into it, licking across your skin as only wet heat can. You shudder with it. 

Still you meander through the nearby park, ducking beneath low-hanging branches hanging heavy with fruit, the citrus of them permeating the air. It’s quiet, with just the distant shouts of the playground and the whisper of the leaves in the stirring breeze to accompany you both. 

You find yourself at the koi pond without meaning to and Takao wordlessly heads to the food meter as you settle yourself on the rock wall that edges the pond. The surface ripples, orange and gold scales muted in the murky water like a sunset covered by clouds. You trail your fingertips over the surface, and giggle as they mouth at them. 

Takao presses some feed into your palm when he comes back; the heat of him lingers there. Your mark glimmers in the light as you toss in the feed, a needlepoint flash of silver. You can feel Takao’s eyes on it. But then the koi come up in great, arcing splashes, the quiet pond roiling like the angry sea in their fervor, and you laugh as you dodge the worst of it.

Takao chuckles, and he settles down next to you to hand you the last of the feed.

You curl into him despite the heat, skin against skin, a slick slide of a touch before you fall still. The koi are still churning up the water, their gaping mouths breaking through the surface, and you give them what they want. Scales flicker by, a mesmerizing firework show caught beneath the surface, and so it catches you off guard when Takao suddenly says—

“I’m sorry.” 

You go still.

“For what?”

He shifts beside you; when you glance at him, he’s staring into the distance, his dark eyes caught on something that only he can see.

“For high school.”

You breathe out through your nose. “So you’ve said.”

“I was scared.”

“So you’ve said,” you repeat.

He glances at you, then, and his eyes remind you of the vastness of the unending night sky, dark and glittering.

“I’m not scared anymore.” 

You suck in a sharp breath. He waits, ever patient.

“Me neither,” you say, curling your pinky around his, twining around him like thread. 

He cups your cheek, his touch almost reverent, and presses his forehead to yours. “Okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” you breathe.

He leans in and kisses you. It’s careful and sweet.

It feels like coming home.

He breaks the kiss when you’ve stolen each other’s breath away.

 “Our soulmates—” he starts.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say breathlessly, kissing him again. He’s smiling against your lips.  Warmth floods you. You love him, you love him, you love him. That’s all there is. That’s all you need. 

“It doesn’t matter,” you say again.

He presses his forehead against yours. “You’re right,” he says. “It doesn’t.”

Until suddenly, it does.

***

You and your soulmate—Shinsuke, you think, still tasting the honey of it on your tongue, Shinsuke Shinsuke Shinsuke—watch each other. 

The only sound is the steady fall of the rain. 

It’s picked up again, sending the hydrangeas eddying, spinning in a lazy current as their puffball blossoms catch the droplets. More petals flutter to the ground. The blue of them is stark against the dirt, and you think of what a storm leaves in its wake.

Shinsuke lets out a deep, slow breath, and you wince. His amber eyes have dimmed and the last of his smile has washed away, leaving just the dregs of emotion behind, too faint for you to read. 

You feel too small for your skin; your heart is fluttering, a hummingbird thing, trying to press through the gaps in your ribcage. You take in a shallow breath. It tastes of the earth, of drenched soil and summer heat. You choke on it. 

Shinsuke’s brow furrows as you take in another breath, even shallower than the last, and your heart is thrumming, and his eyes are so sharp, so knowing, so kind. You’re caught in the amber of them, the resin of his gaze pouring over you. 

Even the rain seems quiet now. 

His lips part.

Your ribs start to crack; your heart thumps harder against them. Too strong, too fast, too loud. 

His lips part, and you do the only thing you can.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp.

You run.

[whatgaviiformes]

Fic: Reflection 2/2

First Part here or Ao3 here Summary: Gordon stares at himself. In part 2 - ...and Virgil watches Words: <1K ~*~*~

Reflection - part 2

Virgil’s got a pretty good sense of what goes on in his periphery. 

Granted, he doesn't immediately scan for entryways and nearest exits every time he enters a room the way his security-inclined siblings do. Kayo somehow manages to do it without an obvious deviation to her gaze, so it's not apparent at all that that's what's happening. But it is, and it speaks volumes to his sister's ability to multitask. 

But this doesn't preclude Virgil from being in tune with what's happening around him. He may not be able to sense danger from the way someone’s shoulders hunch to hide themselves when entering a building, but he does have a strong sense of observation when it comes to what he knows well, or what he wants to know well. Things like the island landscape he's painted a thousand times and more; the exact paint hues he needs to combine to create the sapphire in his baby brother's eyes; the number of wrinkles on Scott’s shirt to know if he actually slept that night; how jittery John is in his fingers incremental to his caffeine intake. 

Things like that. 

So when Gordon rotates his shoulders and eases back to sit on his heels, Virgil notices the movement. He doesn't say anything right away because the moment doesn't warrant it. The chore is a little too heavy for ribbing about laziness, which would be the appropriate response if it were any other type of rescue. As it is, they are both trying to forget about the losses made all too real by the lingering mud on Two’s windshield, caked on so firmly that the water jets only managed to release about two thirds of it. The rest was down to human persistence. 

Gordon's persistence. 

And his own. 

For him, it hurts when he lets himself think about it too much, which is why Virgil buries his ears in Beethoven’s 7th and lets the ache of the composer’s hearing loss envelop him instead while he listens for shifting key centers and tension tossed between instrumentation. The technical music analysis keeps his brain from wandering back to muddied faces, slack with breathlessness. Except for in the second movement, admittedly. Allegretto wasn’t just “less lively.” She was brutal, and his eyes may have blurred with sadness in the key of A-minor for just a moment while faces swam in the glass. 

It still helps. Somehow. The painful reminder of human experience.

So that’s him - his heartbeat so firmly tied to the environment around him: the shape of its sounds and the timbre of its sights. He carries on because he must. 

When it comes to Gordon, though? His brother is perseverance embodied - all the determination of an Olympian, resolve of a soldier, courage of a survivor, and tenacity of someone who gets up every morning balancing chronic injury with self-care and selflessness. His backbone might be physically lighter after surgery, but it’s equally fiercer.

Gordon’s been doing this work in silence, and Virgil wonders exactly what he’s been thinking while Virgil’s been drowning screams with violins. He knows it is possible for Gordon to detach, become the soldier he was trained to be. But it’s rare for their resident aquanaut to let Virgil witness it. Those experiences are something Gordon will channel with Scott, every now and again. 

But Virgil has seen it before - regretfully.  And this isn’t it. 

Virgil squeezes his eyes closed, and when he opens them Gordon’s pressed his fingertips to his mouth, a strange expression on his face while his eyes lock on the crisscrossing of scars near his hairline. Painful memory or badge of honor? Virgil wonders. A little of column A, a little of column B. From his experience, nothing was ever so black and white. 

He just hopes that when Gordon looks at himself in the mirror, when he’s not smiling for the rest of the world to see, he still notices the bravery and feels every iota of admiration marked with his name. Just as on more than one occasion, Scott has reminded Virgil of the same. It’s inherent in human nature to be harder on ourselves, to sometimes see ourselves so differently than those around us. It was never so obvious to Virgil as when he sketched the first draft of each of their portraits. Scott the commander, John the intelligent, Gordon the tenacious, Alan the boy genius. Himself? The supporting role. Scott had shaken his head and called him the heartbeat while Virgil flushed with embarrassment and confusion. Then, he asked Virgil to try again, until he was satisfied that Virgil’s self-portrait captured what the others saw in him. 

Shoulders straighter, wider in the frame. Eyes more confident, but softer, kinder. 

Eventually, Gordon catches him watching. It was bound to happen; they’ve worked together too long and traveled too far for them not to be in tune with the other. In barely a blink,  in front of him is the man he painted all those years ago, scars and all, but eyes carrying the blinding gleam and the joyful spirit of a man who would always get back up again and smile. 

He shifts his earphones, Beethoven barely audible as if through a fog, and Virgil asks genuinely if he’s ok. Gordon, true to form, plays it off with a joke and a smile, even though they both know it’s what they call “a moment.” They’ve had many over the years. This is just another, and it won’t be the last. 

This part isn’t keen observation; it’s intuition. Virgil just knows that this moment isn’t one he needs to press. Gordon’s ok. They both will be. 

So he grins back at him, gives Gordon the lighthearted response he knows he needs, and resets his music. 

Virgil takes a breath, emboldened by his brother’s endurance beside him.

And then he keeps going.

[shadowed-vigil]

day 10: stable

adjective: not likely to give way or overturn; firmly fixed; not deteriorating in health after an injury or operation. characters: grinnaux de dzemael, paulecrain de fanouilley, thancred waters word count: 702 [spoilers up to the end of 6.0; the warrior of light does not wake up on the ragnarok]

She’d won. 

She shouldn’t be allowed to die. 

That’s how it worked — how it ought to work, because fair’s fair and might makes right and if she had been able to best the very embodiment of despair itself, then at the very least she shouldn’t bring more of the same to her companions, her friends, her —

Well, whatever they were to her. 

Thancred had held up his end of the bargain for better or worse. They’d gotten little more than a few minutes in the chirurgeons’ room, each second ticking by oddly — dreadfully ominous, unsettlingly final. 

The morning that she’d left for Ultima Thule, in those last moments before she’d reached for the door, Grinnaux remembers thinking that she’d looked so uncharacteristically small, so diminutive; little warrior, with her greatsword and the weight of the world resting squarely on her shoulders. She’d been wistful in her own way — her categorical way, always one to be reticent, particularly with him, particularly after everything. And sure, he may be a fool, but he wasn’t foolish. He’d known the stakes were different, higher. If he hadn’t, he’d have had no reason to bang down her door the way that he did the night prior. 

In retrospect, he should have let her break his arm, or his leg, or whatever she would have had in store; made her make good on her threat, even if it would have been worthless in the end. An honest effort, instead of simply standing aside to let her walk out, to have her come home like this. 

In the bed, pale and weary, with her sweat-slicked forehead and her hair loose and unkempt, so much of her wrapped in bandages that color as if they’re soon in need of replacing, she looks — 

“They say she’s stable now.” Thancred’s voice sounds as if it’s through some thick fog, distant in his ears. Too faint and too far away to be reassuring in the way the man must mean for it to be. “Better than when we first landed, at least. Certainly better than during the trip.” 

He’d scoff if he could. Grinnaux knows well enough what someone looks like when they’re dying. 

Not that it hadn’t been bad in the immediate aftermath. He and Paulecrain both had caught a glimpse and it may as well have been an eyeful, the way her head had lolled lifelessly over the arm of the astrologian who’d carried her off the Ragnarok, the blood smeared across her hands, her face, seeping through her clothes, staining those fretfully channeling aether into her broken body.

Paulecrain stands very still beside him and says nothing. Grinnaux can tell the man reaches similar conclusions, based on how he stiffens, the visible tension in his jaw.

Thancred sighs. 

“I know you had to see her.” 

His voice hangs like he means to go on, but instead the hyur falls silent. The three men stand there together until the last of their allotted seconds tick by, echoing footsteps from down the hall preceding the inevitable hushed reprimands. Thancred takes the brunt of the scolding — the he should know betters and the she needs her rests all meaningless because what were they going to do that could hurt her even more? 

What if she woke up alone? 

What if she didn’t — ?

“She will. She’ll recover.” 

Thancred seems to read their minds as they spill back out into the hallway, all clenched fists and grit teeth and hollow eyes. His face is grim, but there’s a conviction in his voice, an unspoken she doesn’t have a choice in the undertones. Like he has the means to promise it. 

“We’ll want to see her again.” Paulecrain’s voice cuts like a knife, sharp and cold. “The healers may have their jobs to do, but after —” 

“Aye, of course,” the hyur pinches the bridge of his nose and inhales deep. “You know where she is now, anyway. Who could possibly stop you?” 

No one. Nothing. 

Thancred sighs again. 

“I know you want to know what happened.” Weariness seeps into his voice as he speaks. Outside, the trees gently sway with the westerly wind, their leaves shiny and bright where the moonlight catches them. 

“I’ll tell you.”

[youlikefanficdontyousquidward]

Hot Chocolate

Recomweek Day 4: Traditions

Summary: Whenever Zdinarsk's Dad was happy with her he made her hot chocolate.

CW:Angst just a lot of angst.

Zdinarsk's Dad made her hot chocolate when she fell in the park. The spartan concrete play area gravel dug in and stuck to her wounded knee's. It hurt, it hurt more than anything Zdinarsk had experienced in all her four years of life. She kept tears welling in her eyes, holding back the sobs for a reason she forgot. Zdinarsk waddled to her Dad and stood waiting for him to turn. He did, cooing at her and smiling.

"Oh my bug you okay?" He glanced to the woman sat next to him on the bench. Zdinarsk looked at her before nodding her head.

"You wanna play a little while longer?" he asked and she nodded again.

He carried her home later, telling her she was so brave. Her mother washed her wound and when she waddled back to her Dad he held her little plastic mug out. She crawled onto his lap on the sofa and stared at the unfamiliar liquid.

She took her first sip of hot chocolate and gulped the rest down eagerly.

When she was six she sat on that same sofa as her parents screamed at one another. On Christmas eve her mother slammed the flats door behind her. Zdinarsk's Dad bellowed curses out a window before taking one of those glass bottles to and slumping down next to her.

"We don't need her." He gulped the smelly stuff. Zdinarsk moved to the floor to change channels and watched TV there until the clock read 03:00. Her Dad snored, tear stained cheeks slack as he drooled a little. Zdinarsk crawled back up onto the sofa, resting her head in his lap.

She woke late that morning. It was Christmas! How could she sleep when Santa must have been already! She jumped down and went to the corner by the mirror where presents were placed. Last year she had two brightly wrapped boxes, one from Santa, one from Mum and Dad. This year the corner was empty.

Zdinarsk stepped past her sleeping Dad to their parents room. The bed was still made, Mum still not back? She stepped back to her Dad, the clock read 11:00. Zdinarsk nudged his cheek with her fingers.

"Daddy. Daddy it's Christmas" She whispered, voice as loud as ever. He stirred, groaning and sitting up. Zdinarsk fell back as he moved before scrambling back onto her knees. His face fell, a look on his face she'd never seen before.

"Oh um wait here bug." He shuffled slowly to the bathroom. He was in there until the clock read 11:27. Zdinarsk sat patiently on the sofa, she was hungry. Mum normally made special breakfast for Chirstmas, sweet pancakes and bacon. Her Dad returned passing her mumbling before going to his room. She watched him return holding the two wrapped presents and set them on her lap.

He smiled before wincing and rushing back to the bathroom. Zdinarsk picked at the paper, turning each in her hands. They had no tags. Mum and Dad always watched her open her presents, they'd missed so many always recently. Zdinarsk's Dad popped back out swallowing some pills before slumping down on the couch.

"Are they both from Daddy?" Zdinarsk asked.

"Yeah yeah both of 'em." He strained out.

"No Santa?" Zdinarsk asked, feeling her tears welling up. He shot up, wide eyes fixed on her.

"Oh shit, I mean shoot, aww bug. I'm sorry, it's... it's just Daddy. I get you the gifts. Im sorry bug I didn't mean to ruin it." He slumped his head down in his hands. Shaking and rocking, a sob wracking through his shoulders.

Zdinarsk picked at her corner again, staring at her Dad.

"It's better this way." She spoke softly, her Dad lifting his face to her again. The teared expression shocked her but she held it to herself. "Both from Daddy!" She put a big smile on for him, tearing into the gifts numbly.

That evening he made her hot chocolate again, apologizing for the lack of turkey. Zdinarsk told him it was dry and she didn't like it anyway. He ruffled her hair.

"That's my Bug."

She was eight when her hair matted. Zdinarsk's Dad had never learned to do the protective styles her curly hair needed. He'd combed it occasionally but he was always so busy and she couldn't do it well.

He fretted, eyeing her hair across the sofa. Zdinarsk was so used to seeing her Dad cry at this point the sorrow didn't shock her. Still it hurt to see him like that. Zdinarsk spied a woman on the TV, short cropped hair, buzzed to the skin. She smiled, elegant in a long flowing gown.

"Dad, I want hair like the pretty lady on the TV!" She chirped, pulling on her smile.

"Aw bug I dunno I can't...Oh yeah bug I can do it like that." He smiled over her shoulder at the woman.

He sat her in front of the bathroom mirror on the tall kitchen chairs. Her Dad pinched her cheeks before he turned the clippers on. In a few short minutes Zdinarsk watched her once curled hair fall to the ground. Zdinarsk gave her Dad her smile when he was done.

"Just like the pretty lady." She beamed. He smoothed the short hairs, brushing clumps off her clothes.

"Better!" He kissed her scalp.

That evening there was spray cream of her hot chocolate when she sat with him on the sofa.

Zdinarsk's Dad had always joked to friends that he didn't want another woman in his house again. That he already had the only woman he'd ever love. He was right, he nervously introduced Embry to her at twelve.

Zdinarsk welcomed him in, smiling at the man who filled her fathers heart again. They sat around the table again, her Father cooked again, he even paused to say grace. Zdinarsk hadn't realized how much she'd missed that.

Zdinarsk talked politely to Embry, which turned to joking and laughing with the man by the end of the day. He touched her short hair, she'd been shaving it herself for some time but wanted to grow it out again.

"You know if you don't wanna bother with the curls I could come with you to get it relaxed?" The man smiled at her. She liked him, she liked that her Father liked him.

"I'd love to." She smiled.

Zdinarsk and her Father waved him off before he went to get the mugs out.

When Zdinarsk was 16 the recruiters came to her school. They promised money, independence and if you were lucky? You could be shipped off to Pandora. Zdinarsk's eyes sparkled with the idea, an alien world. She signed up on the spot.

Zdinarsk's father was having a hard time raising her, even with Embry moved in and helping. she knew she was a drain on them. This way she could rid them of the pest. Hell in a few years maybe she could be paying them back.

Her fathter was so proud when she told him. His daughter, the brave strong soldier. Embry brought them their mugs that day and the day before she left for training.

Now she stood in the kitchen again. Her fathers eyes glassy as she told him she was leaving. That she'd be in cryo for six years, on rotation for ten, then six back home again. He slumped into his chair.

"I'll be an old man by then" he finally breathed out.

"Your an old man now." Zdinarsk joked, nudging his arm. He smiled rising the cabinet.

The memories seemed so far away now. Zdinarsk stared over her knees into the star speckled void of space. If the ship moved even a little she'd see Polyphemus and the moon Pandora. She didn't want to. She wanted to curl up on her beat up sofa with her Dad.

Six years cryo, ten serving and now fourteen since they started growing her in the pod on the way back. She wondered how her Dad reacted to her death, if Embry was still with him, how he'd feel about it. She wondered if they still had that awful sofa. Maybe her money made it back and they'd get a better one, she wished they wouldn't.

Quaritch had left her a mug on her night stand when he dropped by. He said nothing just placed it there and left. She lifted it now, cold, to her lips and sipped.

The sickly sweet concoction was unpleasant. Somehow lumpy and watery and not even tasting of that artificial chocolate syrup. Still she drank it despite all that. Plenty of cheap hot chocolate mixes in her past, it tasted like home.

[notjustabadguy]

One Night (Part 1: Carl)

A Ghost (1990) fanfiction

For both Sam Wheat and Carl Bruner, there was one night that felt like an eternity. Two different men, two separate nights; and yet, in some ways, these two endless nights were two sides of the same, single, story.

...

Part 1: Carl

Carl paced anxiously. What in the hell was taking Willie so long? He was supposed to call two hours ago now. Carl tried to reason with himself: Willie hadn’t struck him as the most… reliable person. He was just… passed out drunk, or strung out on some shit, something… but surely, surely he’d gotten the address book. How hard could it be? How hard could it possibly be to get hold of one lousy little scrap of paper with some numbers scrawled on it? Even a piece of shit like Willie could do that.

Two hours, 19 minutes overdue. Carl kept trying to distract himself, and failing; he turned on the television, tried to watch the news, and then switched it off almost immediately. He picked up the newspaper from the counter, found all the lines of print blurred together in his mind into an incomprehensible mess, and threw it down in frustration. He tried the television again, blindly flipping channels; a rerun of I Love Lucy was on. Lucy was wailing about something. He clicked the Off button furiously, and Lucy diminished into blackness. He couldn’t stop sweating.

Three hours and seven minutes. Carl felt like screaming. Willie had been caught. He must have been. Carl kept waiting for the sharp, official rap on his door; the coldly formal voice to announce, “Police!” It didn’t come.

The phone rang. Carl uttered a strangled little half-cry and leapt for it in one fluid motion. “Willie! What—”

But it was Molly’s voice that came back to him. “…Carl?”

Her tone stopped him dead in his tracks. Her voice was hoarse and wet, filled with tears, and hardly above a whisper. It was also empty, flat, listless, like all the life, all that special Molly sparkle that he loved so much, had been drained out of it. She didn’t seem to have even registered what he’d said. And then only her harsh breathing, and the faint static of the phone line. He thought he heard an intercom somewhere dimly in the background.

The world went cold.

“Molly? Molly, what’s wrong? Molly, what happened?”

A long, shuddering breath. “Carl? We’re—I’m in the hospital.”

“Hospital?” No no no please no… “Molly, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m… I’m fine.” She uttered a short, painful gasp. “Sam…”

“Molly, is he okay? Molly, is Sam hurt?” But he already knew. His mind was racing wildly. Ok, Sam’s hurt—it sounds like maybe badly—but he’ll be okay, I know Sam, he’ll be fine…

“Carl…”

A long pause. Carl’s heart was beating frantically. Finally, he couldn’t stand the silence. “Molly—!”

“Carl, Sam’s…” A brief, strangled sob. She took a steadying breath, and began again. Her next words were lost and hopeless. “…Sam’s dead.”

Nothing made sense. Nothing connected. Time was frozen. Carl knew he must have said something—something soothing, comforting, he supposed, from Molly’s reaction—but he had no idea what. She said something in return. His brain on autopilot, he carried on talking for a minute or two, still not knowing what he was saying, then hung up. The soft, plastic click of the receiver shattered the painful stillness of his apartment.

That was his last clear recollection of that night—the click that symbolized that the world was breaking. He might have screamed. He thought dimly that he was screaming, but afterward, it occurred to him that it might have only been inside his head. Time stood still, and the screaming went on and on, and everything was colder than he’d ever imagined it could be.

At some point, he must have slept. He woke up, fully dressed, on his bed, curled up like a child in the grip of a nightmare, his hands clutching feverishly at his sheets. His head throbbed with a slow, thumping ache, and his tongue was dry. His lashes seemed to be glued together, and when he pried them apart, the weak autumn sunlight filtering through the white curtains stung his eyes. There was one blissful moment where he wondered vaguely why he felt so rotten; then it sank into him, slowly and relentlessly, the knowledge suffocating. He closed his eyes again hopelessly and forced himself back into unconsciousness.

He woke again, at some point later in the day—the sun was brighter then—and once again retreated almost immediately into a sleep blacker than death. And again. When he woke the fourth time, though—the sun was gone, the street outside now gray—thirst drove him out of bed and into the bathroom. He drank deeply from the tap, gulping greedily, then splashed the cold water onto his face. He felt a little better.

He examined the face in the mirror, which hardly looked like his own. The eyes were bloodshot, the skin around them dark and raw. He would need to do something about that. He couldn’t let people… let them wonder. All his muscles felt weary; movement was slow and painful. He pulled himself into the kitchen. He didn’t think he’d ever feel hungry again, but he still boiled water for noodles.

Sam was gone, and that was awful

(and it was my fault but he wouldn’t think about that)

but he was still here, he was still alive; he had to move on, that was all there was to it. He would go see Molly tomorrow. He could help her. He would call in from work for a few days—they’d understand… in fact, they might be suspicious if he didn’t. He’d be able to get the address book from the loft later. Everything would be… everything would be all right. This was his one chance at life, and he couldn’t afford to waste it.

[pangolinheart]

FFXIVWrite 2023 DAY 21 - GRAVE

Tesleen's death was difficult for everyone at the Inn at Journey's Head, and it was especially difficult for Alisaie. Despite feeling shaken herself, Rhiki takes it upon herself to do something for both of her friends.

(I can't take any credit for this one! It was a suggestion by several people in the FFXIV OC Swap Discord channel! I really appreciate all of the help!)

Rating: Teen Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort Characters: Alisaie Leveilleur, Warrior of Light (Z'rhiki Irhi) Word Count: 2,124 Content Warnings: Mentions of character death, mentions of body horror

Z’rhiki’s face was damp. It was damp with sweat, from the perpetual heat of the day as Mord Souq’s unforgiving, ever-present sun loomed overhead; with condensation, rising out of the cauldron as steam and clinging to her face as she hovered over it; and with tears, still slipping down her cheeks. Frustrated, she groped blindly beside her for the dishrag. Finally catching it in her fingers after a few probing attempts, she used it for what felt like the twentieth time to violently scrub the moisture from her face until her skin burned from the friction. Sniffling, she discarded the scrap of cloth once more and leaned back over the pot to check its contents. Good color, good aroma, good consistency. After another similarly disorganized scrabble for her ladle, she dipped it into the stew and brought it back up to taste. She hoped the saltiness came from the added ingredients and wasn't just the residual taste of her own tears, but if it did, it was perfect. She carefully removed it from the cookfire and began the process of cleaning up her culinarian accoutrements. She focused on breathing deeply and allowed the methodical motions of wiping and re-packing her items, then of portioning out the stew, to calm her so that she could keep her composure upon returning to the Inn.

With her supplies stored, the waste discarded, and the stew in thermoses lining her satchel, there was nothing to do but begin the short trek back.

It took her a few minutes to locate Alisaie after reaching the camp and setting aside her gear. She found her off to the side, in the shade of one of the massive stone crags that sheltered the camp. She was sitting with her knees hugged loosely to her chest, staring plaintively at the sandy ground in front of her but somehow giving the impression that she was looking at something much further away. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and Rhiki could see the salty trails of drying tears. She was sure her own face looked not much better, skin stinging and irritated from both the blazing sun and her incessant rubbing. Alisaie was no longer crying (and might deny that she ever had been, despite the obvious evidence), but the distant stare wasn’t much of an improvement.

Rhiki crouched down beside her. She reached out and gently touched the girl’s shoulder, causing Alisaie to at last tear her eyes away from the sand and look up at her.

“How are you holding up?” Rhiki asked softly.

Alisaie must have suddenly remembered the tearstains on her face because she reached up to wipe them away with one of her sleeves. “I’m… I’m alright." She inhaled shakily. "I checked on the patients, I helped gather and wash linens, I changed sheets and bandages, I sorted the larder, I carried supplies, I chased off some scissorjaws – I’ve done everything there is to do!” Cracks were forming in her voice as she spoke, “And it’s still not enough! Not even close! How can it ever be, when…”

Rhiki nodded, understanding. The grief was always easier when there was something to do. It was always there, lurking in the periphery, but at least if you were busy you could keep it at a distance. When there was nothing left to do, though, it would catch right back up to you. Alisaie had been in a frenzy, doing chores and running errands, ever since they had arrived back at the Inn at Journey’s Head to deliver the news of what had ultimately become of Tesleen – that her soul had been set free, and that the eater that consumed her would no longer tarnish her memory. It was partly to keep busy, Rhiki knew; focusing on the ways she could help so that she didn’t have to think about all the ways she couldn’t. But she suspected it was also Alisaie’s way of making up for Tesleen’s absence. Tesleen had always been hard at work around the Inn, performing whatever tasks were asked of her with a smile. Neither of them could replicate the glow her presence brought to the camp, but perhaps they could lighten the workload, at least for a time.

They couldn’t stay forever, though, and Rhiki had known that, at her frenetic pace, Alisaie would sooner or later run out of duties to perform. In anticipation of that, she had assigned herself a duty. It was small, but she hoped that it might ease Alisaie’s heart a bit. Her friend cared so much, and hurt all the more for it. But she never let the hurt stop her from caring. She deserved to have someone care for her every once in a while.

“C’mon,” She said, giving Alisaie’s shoulder a pat. “I’ve got something to show you.”

“Can it wait? I’m not really in the mood.” Rhiki could understand that. She was exhausted; they both were. She was weary and heartsick and fraying at the edges. Which was why it couldn’t wait.

That, and the stew would get cold.

Rhiki shook her head. “No, it can’t. But it won’t take long, I promise.”

Alisaie regarded her warily, but seemed to recognize the earnestness in Rhiki’s voice and in her eyes, and sighed. “Alright, then. What is it you have to show me?”

Rhiki stood and extended a hand to Alisaie, helping her to her feet. She led her by that hand out of the encampment and around the Inn’s outer edge. The sun still raged overhead, the heat making the air around them shimmer and warp. Even with the loosely-packed sand slowing their progress, though, it was not a long walk.

Soon, they reached a peaceful stretch of sand from which one could clearly see the standing stones that formed the walls of the Inn. Rhiki slowed, then stopped, and Alisaie stopped with her. She released Alisaie’s hand, and looked at the girl as the girl looked at her meager creation.

“Rhiki, what have you…” Alisaie trailed off. Rhiki was immediately self-conscious about the jagged, flat-faced stone she had salvaged from one of the nearby Nabaath ruins. Oh gods. This had been a foolish idea, she thought. She had totally overstepped, and hadn't even done a very good job. Why had she ever thought she should show this to anyone, let alone Alisaie?

It was just a piece of crumbling wall, but it was the nicest piece she could find, with one of its surfaces still smooth enough to carve on. She had spent hours trying to chisel a message into it, which had left her pouring sweat, with cracked palms and a sharp ache in her back. She had made her very best effort but, not having the proper tools for engraving stone on hand, her inscription had ended up rather crude, with its letters inconsistently sized and spaced. Though it was hardly a masterpiece, she was happy it was at least legible. Alisaie confirmed this when she said:

“This is for Tesleen, isn’t it?”

Her eyes followed the path of the chisel across the stone’s face.

TESLEEN

WE ALL DESERVE HAPPINESS, WHEREVER WE CAN FIND IT

Rhiki nodded reluctantly. It was for Tesleen, the kind and caring soul who had made them stew on Rhiki’s first night in Ahm Arang. Who had brought comfort to so many in the last days, even the last moments of their lives. Who opened her heart to the patients of the Inn with the full knowledge that at the end of their stay she would have to help them embark on the next leg of their journey. Who would see them off with a smile and the taste of their favorite food.

It was for Tesleen, but it was also for Alisaie. Her dear friend. The girl who strove with all of her might to make a difference, even a small one. The girl who tried, and tried, and tried, and kept trying when others lost hope – because even if it was hopeless, it was still better to try. The girl who cared so much it hurt. The girl who had grabbed her hands in front of the Aftcastle in Limsa Lominsa and begged Rhiki not to leave her alone.

They both deserved so much better than a chipped hunk of stone with a sloppily carved message in the middle of the godsforsaken desert. They deserved better than anything she would ever be able to give them. But at least she could give them this, what little it was.

“I-I know it’s not very good! I tried really hard, but you know my handwriting is terrible, even on parchment! I know that she should have something nicer – and maybe one day, when we fix all of this, we can make something better!” She could feel her words start to catch in her throat. “I know it’s not a proper grave, but one of the other carers - Willfort, I think – said that she cared about this sort of thing – about giving people the chance to say their goodbyes. So I just thought….”

She could feel the hot tears starting to form under her eyes. Alisaie had her face turned away, towards the stone, but suddenly Rhiki saw her shoulders begin to shake. She grabbed Rhiki’s hand again and squeezed. Her long braid jerked back and forth as she shook her head fervently. “No, no it’s not- I just- I…” Alisaie took a deep breath and tried again, this time looking into Rhiki’s eyes, tears already sliding from the corners of her own, “I think she would like it.”

Rhiki grabbed Alisaie and pulled her into a firm hug, feeling her shudder as she tried and failed to contain a sob. She held her there, and after a moment Alisaie returned the hug. She buried her face against Rhiki to hide tears that now fell freely, and Rhiki reached up with one hand to stroke her hair soothingly, though she had to sniff to force back her own weeping. She wasn’t sure how long they stood there, only that she didn’t let go until Alisaie finally stilled, and eventually pulled away on her own. She looked like she was about to say something, but Rhiki spoke first.

“Here, I- It’s not just the stone. There’s something else.” She dropped her hands from where they had come to rest on Alisaie’s shoulders to open the flap of her satchel and pull out one of the metal thermoses she had stored there. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she carefully unscrewed the lid and placed the open container at the base of Tesleen’s memorial.

Alisaie was sniffling so much Rhiki doubted she could really smell anything, but she had obviously gotten a glimpse of the contents, because she almost laughed.

“Is that… stew?!”

Rhiki nodded again. “Yeah.”

“Rhiki do you have any idea how hot it is out here in the sun?” Alisaie’s voice teetered between laughter and more crying.

“I know!” Rhiki said, “But… I don’t know what Tesleen’s favorite food was. And this was what the three of us ate together when I first arrived… though it is a lot cooler in the shade…” She shook her head. “It’s a bit late now but… that’s what they do here, right? Send people on their way with the taste of happier days?”

This time it was Alisaie’s turn to nod, and her eyes welled up again as though she was about to lapse back into sobs.

“I brought some for us, too,” Rhiki continued hastily, fishing the additional thermoses out of the bag. “So, you know, we could share it. But you’re right, it’s scorching out here, so maybe we should just take it back to-“

Alisaie seized the soup and wrested it from her grip before she could finish. “No! I- I mean, you made it for us to share, didn’t you? So, l-let’s have a little of it here, shall we?”

“Okay.” Rhiki relented and took up her own container. “I, uh, forgot to bring forks or spoons, so you’ll just kinda have to….” She mimed tipping the thermos up as if to drink from it, and Alisaie laughed, though still had to pause to sniff the mucus from her sinuses. She did as Rhiki had indicated and tipped some of the stew into her mouth.

“Is it good?” Rhiki asked before she had even had enough time to chew, and had to wait for a reply.

After swallowing, Alisaie glanced back at her. “It’s great,” she said, taking a deep, quivering breath. “It’s perfect. All of it. Thank you Rhiki. Really, Thank you.”

Rhiki smiled fondly at her “It’s the least I could do. For either of you.”